THE ACTION HERO REVISIONED: AN ANALYSIS OF FEMALE “MASCULINITY” IN
THE NEW FEMALE HERO IN RECENT FILMIC TEXTS
by
JO-ANNE SHIRLEY GOODWILL
submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in the subject
ENGLISH
at the
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
SUPERVISOR: DR D C BYRNE
FEBRUARY 2009
Dedication
I dedicate this dissertation on women action heroes to
the two women heroes in my life:
My fiancée Maggie Neilson, who has lovingly supported me in this difficult
endeavor, who has endured (almost uncomplainingly) my obsession with
female action heroes for the last three years, and who has given me
the priceless gift of allowing my work on this dissertation to be the most
important thing in our lives – at least sometimes.
And my mother, Sidney Goodwill, who loved me enough to think
I was worth educating, even in that long-ago time (the eighties) when
many people still thought that girls weren’t worth the bother.
Both Maggie and Sidney have believed in me completely,
giving me the faith to believe in myself …
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge my promoter, Prof. Deirdre C Byrne, who has supported my
efforts for the past three years, offering her expertise generously and kindly.
Without her guidance, apparently boundless knowledge and ingenious suggestions,
this dissertation would be a great deal the poorer.
I also wish to acknowledge Norrie Lawlor and Brad Bennett,
who gave me the use of their home to write in peace
(with Norrie even sacrificing her office for an entire Labour Day weekend!)
I would also like to acknowledge my colleague and fellow Joss Whedon aficionado,
Susan Ferris, for giving me the gift of Firefly, which enabled me to meet
the warrior woman Zoe, and include her in this dissertation.
And finally, I must acknowledge Joss Whedon, third generation feminist and brilliant
creator of alternate universes, without whom the world itself would be a great deal the
poorer (a world without Buffy the Vampire Slayer is scarcely worth contemplating)!
Abstract
The hero is a key archetype in Western culture. However, the hero has almost
invariably been male, with associated traits deemed “masculine” within the gender
binary. Feminists have begun to rigorously interrogate this binary, and the associated
biological essentialism that precludes women from heroism. The fruits of this process
are evident in recent popular filmic texts, which feature women as heroes. I examine
developments in gender theory, propose a behaviour-based definition of masculinity,
and argue that the new female action heroes authentically perform this masculinity. I
then examine several select recent films and television series, showing that the new
female action hero proves that “masculinity” can be authentically performed by
female-bodied persons, and moreover is a liberatory model for ordinary women who
wish to assert themselves in the public sphere. Finally, I argue that female action
heroes model a new heroic archetype which embraces the best traits of both
“masculinity” and “femininity.”
Keywords
“women in popular culture”
“women as heroes”
“gender studies”
“film and television studies”
“science fiction and fantasy”
Declaration
Student number: 6792219
I declare that
“`The Action Hero Revisioned’: An Analysis of Female `Masculinity’
in the New Female Hero in Recent Filmic Texts”
is my own work
and that all the sources that I have used or quoted
have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references.
Contents
Chapter One: Introduction: A Brave New World of Brave New Women .............1
Chapter Two: Gender Theory and Women Action Heroes ................................ 22
Chapter Three: Female Action Heroes Burst onto the Screen: Ripley
and other Masculine Women in Recent Filmic Texts......................................... 51
Chapter Four: Women Heroes of the Small Screen: Boldly Going
Where no Women Have Gone Before ............................................................... 88
Chapter Five: Conclusion ............................................................................... 129
Bibliography ................................................................................................... 141
Chapter One:
Introduction: A Brave New World of Brave New Women
Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Aliens
In 1979, Sigourney Weaver thrilled movie-goers worldwide as Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley,
heroically confronting the most fearsome creatures that had ever scarred the silver screen in the
hugely successful science fiction film, Alien. She and her audiences enjoyed it all so much that
she came back and battled the creatures again in 1986 – and in 1992, and in 1997. Ripley was the
1
first big screen female action hero, 1 and became an enduring role model for an entire generation
of girls. For example, one young female reviewer notes that “Ellen Ripley is the best role model
a girl could wish for” (Horrorist 2003). Similarly, another internet reviewer writes: “In Alien …
Ripley definitely takes a deserved place in the Heroine Content Hall of Fame beside The Long
Kiss Goodnight’s Samantha and … Terminator 2’s Sarah Connor” (Grace 2007). Another critic
summed it up: Ripley is “an exemplary figure for women in her rugged independence, cool
courage under fire, and resourcefulness” (Bundtzen 1987: 12). A review in Glamour – a popular
magazine not known for being feminist – enthused about the first three Alien films, noting that
they “are just sci-fi popcorn movies, but their effect on female moviegoers has been profound.
Ripley, in her no-nonsense cotton tank-top bodysuit, is the first woman we’ve seen left standing
when all the guys are dead” (Krupp 1992: 163).
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
1
My idea of the “female hero” draws on notions of heroism in myth, as articulated by Campbell, as well as those of
female heroism, as articulated by Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope. Feminist texts have frequently subverted the
rigid role division within patriarchy, according to which women “can’t” be heroes, as Annis Pratt and Judith Kegan
Gardiner mention.
2
While Ripley was the undisputed first female hero of the celluloid screen, she was soon
joined by other equally impressive women. In 1991 millions of movie-goers cheered as a buff,
steely-jawed Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton, fearlessly kicked robotic butt in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Both Ripley and Sarah Connor embody what I shall call “female
masculinity”. 2 They also embody a new archetype that I refer to as the new female hero. Both of
these concepts will be developed and explained in this introduction. Ripley and Sarah Connor
display the traditionally masculine characteristics of strength and courage, while carrying out
heroic missions: Ripley protects the earth from alien invasion, and Sarah Connor leads a mission
to save the world 3 from nuclear annihilation and an horrific future in which machines with
artificial intelligence attempt to destroy humanity. Movie-goers embraced both women with
gusto, as if the sight of women saving the world in popular films was perfectly commonplace.
However, the point is that when Ripley made her debut, it was anything but commonplace. On
the contrary, it was entirely revolutionary for women to appear in the heroic roles usually
assigned only to men, and it is this revolutionary appropriation – and even revisioning – of
masculinity and heroism that I wish to address in this dissertation.
2
Throughout this dissertation, the term “masculinity” is used in a consciously narrow context. It alludes to a select
few, supposedly “masculine” characteristics, which will be clearly delineated in the pages below. These are
characteristics considered “positive” in the public sphere in general, and in the sphere of the heroic archetype, in
particular. This is not intended to imply that masculinity in general is perceived as static; neither is it intended to
imply a valorization of masculinity, and hence of patriarchal power. As is noted by theorists such as Jean Noble,
there are in fact multiple masculinities, just as there are multiple femininities. For example, Judith Halberstam’s
concept of “gender strangeness” emphasizes anomalies and shifts in gender, thus avoiding reinforcing stereotypes
associated with each gender. The intent in this dissertation is to focus on specific characteristics that have
traditionally been associated with masculinity, without at the same time implying that these embody the essence of a
perceived unitary masculinity.
3
“Saving the world” is a common trope in science fiction and fantasy for heroic status.
3
This remarkable phenomenon was repeated again when the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer
featured yet another fearless female hero saving the world – this time, in the unlikely form of a
blonde schoolgirl cheerleader, destined to protect the world from the onslaught of vampires. The
film was released in 1992, but enjoyed only moderate success with audiences. This was most
likely due to the impressively bad acting of the lead, Kirsty Swanson, as well as the fact that
Donald Sutherland seemed visibly embarrassed to even be in the movie – as he commented, “I
just couldn’t bring myself to say I was making a film called Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (Kuzui
and Whedon 1992). Nevertheless, the movie did attract a cult following, and had sufficient
resonance that, five years later, it spawned one of the most successful television series of all
time, also titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, said: “I saw so
many horror movies where there was that blonde girl who would always get herself killed. … I
thought it was time she had a chance to take back the night” (Kuzui and Whedon 1992). Millions
of viewers clearly agreed – the television series premiered in 1997, and ran for an impressive
seven seasons, to both critical and popular acclaim. In 2001, at the end of the fifth season, Buffy
gave her life to save the world, thus apparently ending the entire series – but she had to be
resurrected from her grave for two more seasons, due to the overwhelming outcry from her fans.
Buffy “died” in May of 2001, but by October of the same year she was once again alive and
(literally) kicking.
Buffy was not the only female hero to invade homes via the small screen. Programmes
like Xena: Warrior Princess (which premiered in 1995) and La Femme Nikita (which premiered
in 1997) were also huge successes. Moreover, the trend shows no signs of abating. The year
2006 saw the release of Heroes, a new television series and an unexpectedly massive hit, given
4
that it is science fiction. The show features a number of young people with mysterious
superpowers. Their mission – as is usual in many science fiction texts – is to save the world. But
the important point is that the most important hero of them all – the one who is destined to save
the world – is Claire Bennet, an undeniably female, blonde cheerleader! And while this character
looks superficially rather demure, she displays a seriousness and quiet courage that entirely befit
a hero.
“Female masculinity”? Hayden Panettiere
as Claire Bennet in the 2006 hit television
series, Heroes
Clearly, the new female hero has become an enduring part of popular culture. As Hills sums it
up:
Smarter, tougher and better equipped than both the traditional heroines of the
action genre and many of their contemporary male counterparts, action heroines
are a new breed of arse-kicking female protagonists in action genre films.
Aggressive, heroic and transformative characters such as Ripley from the Alien
series, Sarah Connor from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991),
Rebecca from Tank Girl (Rachel Talalay, 1995), Morgan Adams from Cutthroat
Island (Renny Harlan, 1995), both Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) all of
the Bad Girls (Jonathan Kaplan, 1994) and, more recently, Samantha/Charlie [sic]
from The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlan, 1996) transgress both cinematic
genre codes and cultural gender codes which position female characters as the
passive, immobile and peripheral characters of Hollywood action cinema. …
[T]hese powerfully transgressive characters open up interesting questions about
the fluidity of gendered identities and changing popular cinematic representations
of women … (Hills 1999: 38)
5
What has happened is that there has been a vast sea change in filmic representations of heroes:
traditionally always depicted as men, now they can be women. Hitherto, “action heroines have
been difficult to conceptualize as heroic female characters … [because of] the binaristic logic of
… theoretical models” (Hills 1999: 39). As Hills (1999) points out, even many feminist theorists
have been unable to conceive of female heroes because of the constraints of such binaristic
models. However, some popular filmic texts in the last three decades appear to be having no
problem at all in conceptualizing heroic female characters. By the same token, mass audiences
are having no problem in accepting them: “Alien and its sequels showed that millions of
audience members `of both sexes could connect powerfully to the image of a … heroine getting
sweaty and bloody in brutal physical combat with a monster’” (Inness 2004: 3). Similarly,
television shows featuring female heroes continue to repeat endlessly in syndication, and also
continue to have active web sites devoted to them: “Clearly they resonate with fans and critics
hungry for female heroes” (Magoulick 2006: 731).
Thus, it would seem to be a logical deduction that the rigid gender binary is beginning to
break down in the popular media. In using the phrase “gender binary,” I refer to the social and
theoretical systems which insist and even prescribe that there are two – and only two – genders,
and that these two genders are most usefully defined as being the opposites of one another.
Moreover, this system commonly posits the male as the norm, and the female as merely the notmale, the “other,” or simply the opposite of the norm. In this dissertation, I examine the breaking
down of this concept in recent filmic and television texts, focusing on texts in which women
have performed a role previously only performed by men: the role of the hero. In particular, I
examine the Alien movies and Terminator 1 and 2, and television shows such as Buffy the
6
Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess and Star Trek Voyager. My objective is to show that
women have been able to take on the role of hero because of important shifts in the way our
Western society views or constructs gender. It is also to show that an extremely important shift
has taken place in the way in which the archetype of hero is visioned in our culture, as reflected
in our popular media.
There are critics who dismiss the appearance of female heroes as no more than a transient
fashion trend, with no real significance. However, Inness addresses this contingency as follows:
Do the new styles and behaviors show, as Gerard Jones argues, a profound shift in
the “relationship of women, to power, sex, and aggression”? He believes that
rather than being just the latest fashion trend, these images reflect the fact that
women are challenging the male monopoly of power and aggression, a shift that
has broad ramifications for how gender is constructed. (Inness 2004: 5)
I argue that Jones is correct: what we are witnessing is a dynamic change in the formerly rigid
control exerted by the gender binary. This dynamic, indeed transgressive, change is reflected by
popular filmic texts, which in turn are influencing this dynamic change in the real world. In this
dissertation I examine popular filmic texts with a view to unpacking what they reveal about two
key, related concepts: female masculinity and the new phenomenon of female heroes. In doing
so, I join a number of other commentators who have perceived these films as “texts with social
contexts and possible uses in the reconstruction of masculinity and femininity” (McCaughey and
King 2001: 3).
It is necessary at this point to clarify what I mean by the term “masculinity” in this
analysis. Traditionally, masculinity has meant “of or characteristic of men” and, when applied to
7
a woman, “having qualities considered appropriate to a man” (Barber 1998: 888). However, as
Sedgwick (1995) points out, contemporary gender scholars have asserted that masculinity
sometimes has nothing to do with men. In short, the term “masculinity” is not necessarily to be
associated with a person who has a biologically male body; the attributes that we dub
“masculinity” may be expressed by all kinds of bodies. Indeed, it may be argued that there is a
political agenda underlying the attempt to restrict the power implicit in masculinity to men, and
therefore, as Halberstam argues, “female masculinities are rejected in order that male masculinity
may appear to be the real thing” (1998: 1). The political and sociological purpose of the attempt
to restrict masculinity to men will be explored further in Chapter 2. At this point, suffice to say
that masculinity need not necessarily be restricted purely to people born in male bodies. As
Halberstam has pointed out, female masculinity has been frequently manifested in all societies:
“what we understand as heroic masculinity has been produced by and across both male and
female bodies” (1998: 2). Once that point is accepted, masculinity becomes more open, so that
Berger and his co-editors can ask: “Can the univalent notion of masculinity be replaced by the
idea of multiple masculinities in which rigid boundaries of sexual and gender representation are
blurred and even redrawn?” (Berger, Wallis, and Watson 1995: 3). I argue that the notion of
multiple masculinities can and should be embraced, and moreover that the notion of multiple
masculinities seems to be reflective of the realities currently evident in the Western popular
media, such as the filmic texts I discuss. Once this notion is accepted, “female masculinity”
ceases to be an oxymoron. It becomes an authentic expression of gender, rather than an
inauthentic copy of male masculinity.
8
After all, as has been argued by Butler and other theorists, “female masculinity” is as real
– or as unreal – as “male masculinity.” Indeed, Butler sets out to oppose “…those regimes of
truth that stipulated that certain kinds of gendered expression were … false or derivative, and
others, true and original” (1990: viii). Butler succeeds in this aim, constructing a provocative
theory of gender as performativity, in terms of which we may perceive all gender performances
as equally authentic or inauthentic. In other words, a male who performs masculinity, or who
assumes a masculine position in society, is no more “authentically masculine” than is a female
who performs masculinity.
Female masculinity is becoming more and more evident in social life as well as in media
representations. Moreover, it is expressed in many different ways. For example, Noble suggests
that: “Female masculinity references a range of subject positions – drag king, butch, female to
male (FTM), transman (both operative and non-operative), trans-gendered man, stone butch 4 …”
(Noble 2004: xi). Noble does not clarify precisely what she means by masculinity, or by female
masculinity, but it seems clear from the subject positions that she mentions that she associates
masculinity with physical appearance. This inference may be made because all of the subject
positions she names have one thing in common: they all present an appearance that is more
commonly associated with biologically male persons – to the point that many of them will be
frequently “read” as male. I suggest that this association is erroneous, positing as it does that
“female masculinity” consists merely or primarily in appearing male. Noble refers to misleading
articulations, such as the linkages that the men in Plato’s cave allegory made between the sounds
4
“Stone butch” usually refers to lesbians who do not allow their sexual partners to touch them intimately. This is
usually perceived as a way in which they negate their own femaleness, thus underlining the butch persona.
9
of voices and the shadows cast on the back of the cave (Hamilton and Cairns 1961). I argue that
Noble makes a similarly false articulation by limiting masculinity to those who present an
appearance of maleness.
People have a wide variety of choices in terms of behaviour. They do not necessarily
have to behave according to the way they appear. Hence, masculinity may be presented by
appearance or by behaviours. People of either gender may present in a masculine manner, and
they may or may not also exhibit traditionally masculine behaviours. In any of these possible
combinations, they could be described as masculine. However, in this dissertation I am
concerned primarily with behaviours, and accordingly I suggest that masculinity references a set
of behaviours and ways of thinking. Thus, I propose the following definition of female
masculinity: female masculinity is a particular expression or performance of masculinity, an
expression or performance that is entirely authentic, and that consists in female-bodied persons
engaging in ways of thought and behaviour that have traditionally been considered masculine,
such as claiming the right to authority, or displaying strength, courage, assertiveness,
leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence), and very often heroism. Thus, female
masculinity consists in female-bodied persons expressing characteristics that have traditionally
been considered quintessentially masculine.
My definition of female masculinity emphasizes masculine characteristics that may be
displayed in a person who does not appear in any way male. In popular culture, this would
include characters such as Sarah Connor in the Terminator series, who – while not being in any
danger of being mistaken for a fashion model – is nevertheless extremely unlikely to be mistaken
10
for a man. Similarly, television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by the petite, feminineappearing Sarah Michelle Geller, could never be mistaken for a man – yet she is the
unquestioned leader of all her peers, exhibiting a growing right to power and authority as the
series progresses, being courageous and strong to a fault, and moreover regularly saving the
world from imminent apocalypse. She has all the strengths of the archetypal masculine hero,
regardless of the fact that she does not look remotely like a man.
Sarah Michelle Geller, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
fearlessly slays yet another pesky demon
As Inness expresses it, “Like Buffy, Barb Wire, and Sarah Pezzini, many of the new tough
women are attractive, feminine, and heterosexually appealing but they also challenge the
patriarchal social structure by defending women and acting against the men who threaten them”
(Inness 2004: 14). In short, clothes do not make the man – and neither do short hair cuts or
androgynous features. Rather, it is what the person thinks and does that denote masculinity. My
definition broadens the concept of masculinity in a way that is potentially more subversive of the
current male-dominated patriarchy than a narrower, appearance-linked definition, as it opens a
11
doorway for women who prefer to conform physically to social mores to lay claim nevertheless
to the authoritativeness and power that has traditionally been the domain of men. It is worth
noting that such a definition has been implicitly assumed in other cultures. For example, Ramet
(1996: 2-3) points out that “among the Plains tribes in the nineteenth century … cross-gender
status did not necessarily involve cross-dressing, and some cross-gender females continued to
wear female clothes even though they were engaged exclusively in male tasks and took wives to
take care of household tasks associated with females.” At the same time, I acknowledge that
female masculinity is most commonly associated with women who “look like men”. However,
there are examples of such women who eschew traditionally masculine behaviours and attitudes,
while conversely there are many examples of feminine-looking women with masculine ways of
thinking and behaviours. 5 The key point, however, is that female masculinity pertains to what a
woman does, not what she looks like. As Jodie Foster expressed it, talking about her role in
1991’s The Silence of the Lambs:
I think there’s something very important about having a woman hero who’s a true
woman hero, in the most archetypal sense of the word, and yet doesn’t have to
clothe herself in men’s clothing. She’s not six-foot-two; she doesn’t kill the
dragon by being mightier. She actually does it because of her instinct, because of
her brain …. And that’s a real side of female heroism that should be applauded
5
In addition, it needs to be made clear that female masculinity should not be taken as coterminous with lesbianism.
The notion that it is appears to derive from the gender binary which designates two opposite sexes, with each person
belonging clearly to one or the other, and needing to pair up with an opposite in order to achieve natural completion.
From this notion, it is an easy step to imagine that all masculine-identified or masculine-acting people must
necessarily choose female persons as a love or desire object. While it is true that female masculinity and lesbianism
quite frequently do co-exist in the same person, the important point is that neither necessarily implies the other. As
noted by Noble, “female masculinity has erroneously become coterminous with ontological `lesbianism’ (not all
female masculinities are lesbian; not all lesbians are masculine …)” (2004: xii). In this respect, it is notable that
most of the masculine female characters in this dissertation are heterosexual.
12
and should be respected. … Clarice is a real female hero, not a bad imitation of a
male hero. (McCaughey and King 2001: 14, my emphasis)
This brings my argument to the other key concept in this introduction, namely, that of the
new female hero. As noted above in this chapter, there are many different expressions of female
masculinity, both in real life and in media representations. However, in this dissertation I am
concerned with only one particular kind of female masculinity: the kind that is performed by the
female heroes who have appeared in recent popular filmic texts. Accordingly, in this dissertation
I examine the ways in which recent filmic texts have portrayed transgressive gender behaviours –
and specifically the ways in which they have portrayed female masculinity. In so doing, I will
argue, these texts have created an entirely new kind of hero, the new female hero.
This is a major change because heroes traditionally have been male. As Le Guin puts it,
“In our hero-tales of the Western world, heroism has been gendered: The hero is a man. Women
may be good and brave, but with rare exceptions … women are not heroes” (1993: 5). Le Guin
recalls that there came a point when she looked back over her own opus, and realized that she
had unthinkingly complied with the male-centered archetypes of the collective Western
consciousness. Yet as she points out:
These are Jungian archetypes; without devaluing Jung’s immensely useful
concept of the archetype as an essential mode of thought, we might be aware that
the archetypes he identified are mind forms of the Western European psyche as
perceived by a man. (Le Guin 1993: 5-6)
Le Guin then deals with the immensely important distinction between the terms “hero”
and “heroine.” As she explains:
13
In The Tombs of Atuan, Arha/Tenar is not a hero, she is a heroine. The two
English words are enormously different in their implications and value; they are
indeed a wonderful exhibition of how gender expectations are reflected/created by
linguistic usage. (Le Guin 1993: 9)
Russ (1995: 81-82) expands on the distinction between “hero” and “heroine,” making the crucial
point that the terms are anything but coterminous:
Culture is male. Our literary myths are for heroes, not heroines.
… [I]t is impossible to write a conventional success story with a heroine, for
success in male terms is failure for a woman, a “fact” movies, books, and
television plays have been earnestly proving to us for decades. Nor is the harddrinking, hard-fighting hero imagined as female …
With one or two exceptions … all sub-literary genres are closed to the heroine …
For the heroine the conflict between success and sexuality is itself the issue, and
the duality is absolute. The woman who becomes hard and unfeminine, who
competes with men, finally becomes … a Bitch.
Women in twentieth-century American literature seem pretty much limited to
either Devourer/Bitches or Maiden/Victims.
The point that emerges from this is that while the term “heroine” should mean a hero who is a
female, the fact is that this is a contradiction in terms, given the gender binary which prescribes
that women are by definition not heroic (for heroism is associated with masculinity, which is
presumed to be unavailable to authentic women). Thus, the term “heroine” is a term fraught with
inherent contradictions: it is not a woman who is a brave, assertive leader who saves the world –
rather, it is a woman with serious problems who is unlikely to find fulfilment and happiness as a
woman. Accordingly for a man, being a hero may be perceived as the ultimate fulfilment of his
masculine destiny, while for a woman, being a heroine implies subversion of her feminine
destiny. It is thus clear that what is required in order for women to truly don the hero’s cape is a
revisioning of the hero archetype, so that we may have the vision of a female hero, rather than a
heroine.
14
Le Guin (1993: 9) concedes that she “had not yet thought what a female hero might be,”
and therefore set herself the task of trying to imagine what a female hero might be. The outcome
of this was her depiction of a female hero in Tehanu, the fourth book in the Earthsea trilogy.
This achievement caused Le Guin to recall with satisfaction that in “Adrienne Rich’s invaluable
word, I had `revisioned’ Earthsea” (Le Guin 1993: 12). She acknowledges that this was due to
the influence of feminism, and concedes further: “When the world turns over, you can’t go on
thinking upside down. What was innocence is now irresponsibility. Vision must be revisioned”
(Le Guin 1993: 12, my emphasis).
The world has continued to be turned upside down since Le Guin delivered her Earthsea
Revisioned address at Oxford University in 1992. So it is that we can now look back on many
examples of film-makers setting out to think what a female hero might be, and portraying their
visions in films – and in the process entirely revisioning the hero archetype. Le Guin notes that
the literary tradition which portrayed heroes only as men was based on a myth that perceived
“men as independently real and women … only as non-men” (1993: 16). However, she argues
that “thanks to the revisioning of gender called feminism, we can see the myth as a myth: a
construct, which may be changed; an idea which may be rethought, made more true, more
honest” (Le Guin 1993: 17). This, I argue, is what recent filmic texts have done – they have
revisioned gender, and thus changed the myth of heroism into a more honest (and more
inclusive) myth, in that for the first time, women are also allowed to be heroes. Le Guin sees this
kind of revisioning as profoundly transformative:
The deepest foundation of the order of oppression is gendering, which names the
male normal, dominant, active, and the female other, subject, passive. To begin to
imagine freedom, the myths of gender, like the myths of race, have to be explored
15
and discarded. My fiction does that by these troubling and ugly embodiments. (Le
Guin 1993: 24)
Similarly, recent filmic texts have explored and discarded the myth that only men may be heroes.
In doing so, they have begun to imagine freedom from the myths of gender, in that they have
allowed female characters to take on the masculine characteristics I noted above in my definition
of masculinity: claiming the right to authority, or displaying strength, courage, assertiveness,
leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence), and very often heroism.
Of all of these masculine characteristics, perhaps the most surprising is physicality (and
sometimes violence), for this has traditionally been associated only with males. But now:
One of the hallmarks of the new heroine is her ability to utilize her body to
effectively kick, punch, maim, and kill others, particularly men. This kind of
physicality inherently involves violence. To the extent that violence is considered
integral to the construction of masculinity, and hence antithetical to femininity,
the existence of (violent) heroines is in and of itself transgressive. (Tung 2004:
101)
I would suggest that violence is not essential in the construction of masculinity – but it is
frequently a component, and is almost always the case with the celluloid and small screen heroes
discussed in this dissertation. These are not women who react to a crisis by swooning until
someone passes the smelling salts, or by screaming hysterically in corners. Rather, they react
with physicality and even violence, if it is the appropriately heroic way to react in order to save
the day (or the girl, or the world – and even, surprisingly often, the boy).
This physicality and even violence is undeniably transgressive. However, this is not the
only transgressive aspect of female heroes. The kind of masculinity performed by the new
16
female heroes goes further in deconstructing the myth of the gender binary, in that these female
heroes do not only display characteristics traditionally reserved for men. I argue that they go
further than this, for they also incorporate traditionally feminine behaviours and characteristics
into their heroic activities, thus broadening the hero archetype in a way that is transformative,
transgressive and liberatory. For example, as argued by Hills (1999), Ripley (in the Alien films)
is not simply a female version of the male hero. Rather, she is all that and more. She displays an
… ability to adapt to the new: to negotiate change. Ripley illustrates the
importance of creative thinking in response to the new signs which occur in her
environment, a willingness to experiment with new modes of being and the ability
to transform herself in the process. (Hills 1999: 40)
Moreover, Hills (1999) dismisses critic Judith Newton, who has attempted to reduce
Ripley to a hero who is lacking “radical thrust” because she sometimes exhibits “feminine”
behaviours, as for example when she rescues a cat at the end of Alien (Scott 1979), or when she
becomes obsessed with rescuing a little girl called Newt in Aliens (Cameron 1986). I would
agreed with Newton, and suggest that the hero archetype attains an even more radical thrust
when it dares to embrace aspects of its supposed opposite, that is, aspects of the feminine
archetype. Similarly, some critics, such as Ros Jennings, have argued that because Ripley
appears stripped to her underwear in the final sequence of Alien, she cannot be perceived as a
hero. However, Hills (1999) recalls and rebuts Jennings’s argument:
By rendering her available to male voyeurism, Scott's control of filming in the
final scene ensures that in addition to the so-called masculine traits of bravery,
technical ability and so on – she now signifies a wholly intelligible form of
femininity. Far from celebrating Ripley’s access to both masculine and feminine
qualities, Jennings reads Ripley’s “femininity” as disqualifying her as a hero.
Because Ripley is shown to be vulnerable as well as brave she can be only a token
hero. (Hills 1999: 42-43)
17
However, Jennings misses the point, perhaps due to the fact that she is mired in binaristic,
either/or thinking. Hills (1999) points out that, contrary to Newton’s or Jennings’s dismissal of
Ripley’s status as action heroine, the fact that Ripley is so multi-faceted is precisely what makes
her a female action hero:
… as Yvonne Tasker has argued, this play of vulnerability and strength is
characteristic of the action hero/heroine. Indeed, it is during her final
confrontation with the alien that Ripley is most visibly an action heroine for,
stripped down to her underwear, she presents audiences with an image of a female
character who is both victim and her own rescuer: a character which breaks down
the hierarchical division of active-male/passive-female. Whilst shots of Ripley in
her bikini briefs certainly eroticize her image, her actions supply a strong counternarrative. In other words, not only does Ripley put on a space suit before doing
battle with the alien, she also single-handedly defeats it. (Hills 1999: 43, my
emphasis)
In short, Ripley incorporates in one body traditionally male and female attributes, and
this does not disqualify her from being a hero. On the contrary, it positions her as an entirely
different kind of hero, in that she at once lays claim to a status usually inhabited only by men,
and at the same time transforms and enriches this heroic status by broadening it to include some
traditionally female attributes. As I will show, a similar transformative process can be seen in
other female action heroes, both on the small and the large screens. For example, as has been
powerfully argued by Ross (2004), the heroes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior
Princess “push the limits of what it means to be a hero” (231). They are flexible, and they talk
with their woman friends in order “to understand how their experiences are rooted in patriarchy,
so that they may take action to improve their lives as women” (232). This applies to both the
titular heroes and their women friends. Thus, in stark contrast to the archetypal isolated male
action hero, these women construct their heroism within a community, and are not so much
heroes for other women as heroes with them: “The lead characters must be strong enough
18
psychologically and emotionally to change their approaches to being heroic; they learn that the
toughest hero is a flexible one who relies on others” (Ross 2004: 233, my emphasis). In similar
vein, Samantha/Charly in The Long Kiss Goodnight (Harlin 1996) ultimately is able to
incorporate her maternal love for her daughter Caitlin; while Ripley combines tough heroism
with protective, probably maternal feeling for little Newt in Aliens (Cameron 1986); and Sarah
Connor in Terminator 1 and 2 (Cameron 1984 and 1991) is motivated by her desire to save the
world, as well as by her powerful love for her son, which motivates her to want to save him from
his destiny of spending his adulthood fighting a doomed battle against the machines.
Thus, the female hero broadens the category of hero by combining female masculinity
with traditionally feminine characteristics, such as the maternal instinct, flexibility, sharing and a
talent for and enjoyment of communication. Due to the transformative nature of the depiction of
female heroes in recent filmic texts, I will make reference to Gilles Deleuze’s notion of bodies as
transgressive and transformative to explore the development of female hero characters such as
Ripley, Sarah Connor, Xena and Buffy.
Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Aliens –
the new female hero combines masculinity and
femininity, represented here by the giant gun in
one hand, and the rescued child in the other
19
In sum, then, in this dissertation I examine a select few, popular filmic and television
texts released since 1979. All of these texts feature women who display female masculinity,
specifically in their roles as action heroes. In this analysis, I will argue that these depictions
constitute an ongoing transgressive and liberatory attack on the gender binary, and that they are
forging new ways of being a woman, new ways of being masculine, and new ways of being a
hero, in the popular consciousness. This is creating a dynamically altered social milieu, in which
growing girls and grown women are exposed to alternative, transgressive and ultimately
liberatory ways to perform their own gender. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that
these depictions have arisen precisely because of shifts in the popular consciousness, specifically
what Le Guin refers to as “the revisioning of gender called feminism” (1993: 17). It would seem
that media representations of female masculinity both reflect and shape new understandings of
gender and gender transgression. As noted by Magoulick, with regard to the television shows of
the 1990s which featured strong female heroes:
Producers of these shows sought to answer women’s growing discontent and
dismay at their treatment in the media. Significantly, these responses to frustration
at the lack of strong roles for women on TV coincided with growing numbers of
female viewers with disposable income and spending potential. (2006: 731)
In my analysis, I will draw on the insights of feminist and queer theorists, notably
Halberstam and Butler. The former provides invaluable insights into female masculinity and the
inadequacy of the gender binary, while the latter provides an innovative way of understanding
and deconstructing the gender binary. Halberstam’s analysis will be used to elucidate the
shortcomings and paucity of the rigid gender binary, as well as the political reasons why it exists
in the first place. Butler’s insights will be used to augment Halberstam’s critique that the gender
binary, so far from being an inevitable biological identity, is a social construct, possibly even
20
mere performativity. If gender is mere performativity, it follows that we may choose to perform
alternative roles. This is precisely what the female action hero demonstrably does. Thus, I argue
that the female action hero’s masculinity is profoundly important in the social sphere, for it
strikes a much-needed blow at the limiting constraints of the gender binary. At the same time, I
suggest that the female action hero’s masculinity is profoundly important in the fictional sphere,
for as I will show, it has enabled a revisioning of the ancient archetype of the hero.
21
Chapter Two:
Gender Theory and Women Action Heroes
As I argued in Chapter 1, there has been a major shift in the way people are able to
envision women, so that it is has become possible to see women as action heroes with
“masculine” behavioural traits, rather than as “non-men” cowering in the corner, emitting
piercing shrieks while waiting to be rescued (by a man, of course). Moreover, the new female
action heroes who now grace our popular entertainment screens are not just female versions of
the traditional masculine hero: on the contrary, they embody an entirely different kind of hero,
for they both lay claim to the heroic status previously enjoyed only by men, and at the same time
transform and enrich the traditional heroic role by broadening it to include some traditionally
female attributes, such as the maternal instinct, flexibility, sharing, and a talent for and
enjoyment of communication. Thus, concomitant with what Le Guin calls “the revisioning of
gender called feminism” (1993: 17) I contend that there has been a revisioning of the action
hero.
The question must be asked: how has this revisioning been possible? After all, as pointed
out by Fausto-Sterling (2000: 3), homosexuals did not exist in ancient Greece – there were
merely married, heterosexual male citizens who sometimes had sex with boys or men, when they
felt like it. Only in the modern world, where the concept of “a homosexual” exists, is it possible
for a person to imagine her- or himself as “a homosexual”, with the accompanying psychosocial
22
identity and way of loving. Similarly, it is now possible for us to perceive women as capable of
being action heroes with some masculine behavioural traits, precisely because there has been a
profound shift in how we are able to envision the concept of “woman.” Indeed, as Scott points
out, poststructuralist theory enables us to “articulate alternative ways of thinking about (and thus
acting upon) gender without either simply reversing the old hierarchies or confirming them”
(2003: 378). In order to see how we have reached this point, it is helpful to review some of the
pertinent history of gender theory, and the way in which literary texts of specific time periods
have reflected the contemporaneous ways of framing gender identity. This should shed light on
how we have evolved to the point where the popular consciousness, the popular media, and also
gender theory are able to conceive of this revisioning of the traditional action hero, and can
comfortably accommodate, and even enjoy, the sight of a “masculine” woman taking on a role
previously available only to men – that of the action hero.
Up until around the middle of the twentieth century, it was almost universally believed 1
that gender 2 is assigned by biology, so that biological maleness inevitably implies sociological
masculinity, and biological femaleness inevitably implies sociological femininity. 3 It was also
widely assumed that all infants are born clearly and indisputably either one sex or the other, and
1
Although there were some exceptions, as demonstrated by the fact that the word “queer,” with its contemporary
meaning, was in use before the middle of the twentieth century.
2
In this dissertation, I mean “gender” in the sense of the behaviours associated with a biological sex, rather than
merely the biological sex itself.
3
Note that this applies to Western society specifically. The context for this dissertation is Western society. While it
is acknowledged that this is exclusionary, it is regrettably beyond the scope of this dissertation to attempt to be
inclusive of all societies.
23
that once they reach sexual maturity they will inevitably and universally wish to choose a sexual
partner of the opposite sex. This group of assumptions is sometimes referred to as biological
essentialism, and is built upon a view of the world that reduces most of human behaviour to
genetics (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 233-255). Reduced to its most ludicrous level, this argument
means that XX sex chromosomes result in the wearing of pink dresses. Or, in the context of my
argument, XX sex chromosomes result in cowering in corners, screaming, while someone with
XY sex chromosomes boldly confronts the monster du jour and uses his strength to dispatch it,
thus saving said cowering XX victim (who seems in fact to be doubly victimized, both by the
monster and by her fatally flawed sex chromosomes).
As simplistic as it seems when thus crudely expressed, I nevertheless contend that the
wide and uncritical acceptance of biological essentialism is reflected in a wealth of literature,
which implicitly affirms biological essentialism. Granted, there are exceptions, some dating back
many centuries. Shakespeare himself was fond of a bit of gender bending, as seen for example in
Twelfth Night – although his characters invariably ended up reverting to “gender-appropriate”
clothing and behaviour, and in heterosexual relationships (Olivia’s infatuation with Viola
notwithstanding). Even Jane Austen, that doyenne of impeccable Regency England mores, was
not above featuring the odd tomboy character, such as Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey,
whose childhood is described as follows:
Catherine … had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank
hair, and strong features; so much for her person, and not less unpropitious for
heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys’ plays, and greatly preferred
cricket, not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing
a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no
24
taste for gardens, and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure
of mischief, at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which
she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities; her abilities were quite as
extraordinary. (Austen 1996: 1)
Thus, Catherine Morland starts off her life displaying a penchant for activities deemed more
appropriate to those born biologically male. However, it is notable that the girl’s propensities are
described as “extraordinary.” Moreover, she quickly recovers from her odd propensities, and
thereafter focuses on attending balls and meeting men. In general, Austen does not appear to
question the gender binary as the basis of the social system in which she lived. In fact, Auerbach
(2001) goes so far as to assert that in some of Austen’s books the only thing that animates
women’s lives is the presence of the “opposite” sex. As she puts it, a “collective waiting for the
door to open and a Pygmalion to bring life into limbo defines the female world of Pride and
Prejudice” (327). Hence, Austen appears to give Catherine Morland “inappropriately” masculine
characteristics not to challenge biological essentialism, but merely to position her as different,
thus laying the foundation for her later inappropriately active imagination.
Notwithstanding exceptions such as those just noted, there can be no question but that the
vast bulk of Western literature features characters who are unequivocally either feminine women
or masculine men, and who are equally unequivocally heterosexual. This was based on a
widespread and largely uncritical acceptance of biological essentialism, but the main problem
with biological essentialism is that it offers no explanation for those who do not fit into either of
the two defined categories (i.e. feminine women or masculine men). How are masculine women
to be explained, or feminine men, or homosexuals? If biology prescribes behaviours and
25
sexuality, how is it possible that anyone can be an exception? The solution turned out to be
elegantly simple, and is well summarized by Fausto-Sterling:
… definitions of homo- and heterosexuality were built on a two-sex model of
masculinity and femininity. The Victorians, for example, contrasted the sexually
aggressive male with the sexually indifferent female. But this created a mystery.
If only men felt active desire, how could two women develop a mutual sexual
interest? The answer: one of the women had to be an invert, someone with
markedly masculine attributes. This same logic applied to male homosexuals, who
were seen as more effeminate than heterosexual men. (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 14)
In short, masculine women, feminine men, and homosexuals were simply exceptions who proved
the rule, inversions or opposites of the norm, and the reasons for their deviations from the rules
were likely to be medical. For example, Kraft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1892) sees
homosexuality as an inversion arising from anomalies in the womb, while Havelock Ellis’s
Sexual Inversion (1898) argues that homosexuality (i.e. the inversion of the sex object) is a
“congenital (and thus involuntary) physiological abnormality” (Somerville 248). Ironically,
while Kraft-Ebbing’s and Ellis’s theories attempted to excuse or explain homosexual objectchoice and hence reduce the pariah status of homosexuals, by pathologizing homosexuality they
ultimately achieved precisely the opposite. As Halberstam explains, “there was a larger cultural
imperative at work, namely, the desire to reduce sexuality to binary systems of gender
difference” (1998: 76). Moreover, as is argued by Foucault, what was happening was that the
discourse of sexuality was being transformed into a medical discourse (Foucault 1990: 51-74).
Once sexuality was transformed into a medical discourse, it was but a brief step for nonmainstream manifestations of gender or sexuality to be depicted as pathological. For example,
Riviere’s well-known article on the subject of womanliness as a masquerade clearly depicts
26
female masculinity as pathological. She refers to masculine women as “women who, while
mainly heterosexual in their development, plainly display strong features of the other sex”
(Riviere 1929: 1). Going further, she notes that “Not long ago intellectual pursuits for women
were associated almost exclusively with an overtly masculine type of woman, who in
pronounced cases made no secret of her wish or claim to be a man. This has now changed”
(Riviere 1929: 36). She suggests an interesting theory to account for this change – she believes
these intellectual women now masquerade as womanly. She accordingly attempts to “show that
women who wish for masculinity may put on a mask of womanliness to avert anxiety and the
retribution feared from men” (Riviere, 1929: 36). She appears to base this analysis on her
Freudian assumptions. For example, she refers to one woman who alternates between intellectual
(and hence, in her terms, “masculine” behaviour) and flirtatious (and hence, in her terms,
“feminine” behaviour) as having an unresolved Oedipal conflict with her mother (Riviere, 1929:
37).
I would argue that the key mistake Riviere makes is that she assumes that laying claim to
masculine attributes indicates that a woman actually wishes to be a man (and thus, in her view,
has a psychopathology). For example, she uses the concepts as synonyms, as in “homosexual
women who … wish for `recognition’ of their masculinity from men and claim to be the equals
of men, or in other words, to be men themselves” (Riviere, 1929: 2, my emphasis). While this
may sometimes be true, one of my key arguments is that usually, this is not the case. On the
27
contrary, I would argue that it is more common for women who wish to lay claim to masculine
attributes to have no wish at all to be a man. 4
Of course, Riviere was writing in a different time and place, and it is possible that her
theory that masculine women masquerade as womanly women to escape danger has some truth
to it. As she put it, “Womanliness therefore could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide
the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it”
(Riviere 1929: 3). This foreshadows Butler’s theory of gender as performativity, as expressed in
1990 in her ground-breaking book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
However, Riviere’s emphasis on Freudian-defined pathologies appears to make her blind to the
intensely sociological motivations for the behaviours she documents. In effect, she refers to
women who have strong competencies in activities that have been arbitrarily defined as
appropriate only to men – such as fixing a sink. She then comments on the fact that such women
hide these abilities, or compensate for them with excessively “feminine” behaviors, and comes
up with explanations such as an oedipal complex that arose during the oral-biting sadistic stage
(Riviere, 1939: 41). In a world where women have throughout history been beaten, raped,
tortured, burned alive and murdered for displaying behaviours that men have decreed are
appropriate only for men, I would argue that it is far more likely that these women adopted a
“masquerade of femininity” due to well-founded fear and a desire for self-preservation, rather
than because of lingering problems with transitioning from a desire to bite off the mother’s
nipple, to a desire to bite off the father’s penis (Freeman and Freeman 1992).
4
Those who do are a minority, often self-classified as transsexuals, and are beyond the scope of this dissertation.
28
As self-evident as social pressures now seem to many of us, nevertheless pathological,
psychological or medical discourses tended to dominate thinking about unusual expressions of
gender for much of the twentieth century. For example, I believe that this kind of thinking is
clearly portrayed in Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness, published in 1928. The protagonist,
Stephen Gordon, is an entirely masculine woman – much like the author who created her. As
Hall wrote in a letter in 1934 to Evguenia Souline, “it may be that being myself a ‘misfit,’ for as
you know beloved, I am a born invert, it may be that I am a writer of ‘misfits’ in one form or
another” (Hall 1997: 23). Accordingly, Stephen’s homosexuality is depicted as flowing directly
from her inverted nature – she thinks “like a man,” and therefore must surely desire women. The
fact that her difference is an aberration of nature is emphasized by the fact that even her body is
more masculine than feminine, with broad shoulders and slim hips. Her thighs have a “strong,
lean line,” and her breasts are “slight and compact” (Hall 1974: 321).
The lover Stephen takes, Mary Llewellyn, is portrayed as “normal,” in that she falls in
love with the masculine gender expression of Stephen, rather than with Stephen’s biological
femaleness. Hall clearly perceived homosexuals as “inverts” – created by nature, and therefore
not morally culpable, but suffering greatly due to being essentially the opposite of normal in
terms of gender identity. Tellingly, Stephen first discovers her lesbianism not because she is
attracted to a woman, but rather because of her repulsion at the advances of her male friend,
Martin. When Martin proposes to her, she responds with the kind of horror a heterosexual man of
her time would have experienced if proposed to by another man:
She was staring at him with a kind of dumb horror, staring at his eyes that were
clouded by desire, while gradually over her colourless face there was spreading an
expression of the deepest revulsion – terror and repulsion he saw on her face, and
29
something else too, a look as of outrage. … But what was she? Her thoughts,
slipping back to her childhood, would find many things in her past that perplexed
her. She had never been quite like the other children, she had always been trying
to be someone else – that was why she had dressed herself up as young Nelson.
… In those days she had wanted to be a boy – had that been the meaning of the
pitiful young Nelson? And what about now? She had wanted Martin to treat her as
a man, had expected it of him … . (Hall 1974: 98, 100)
In short, Stephen’s lesbianism is not really lesbianism at all. The character Stephen is male in all
but body, and it is therefore natural for him to desire women – and to be repulsed by the desire of
men. The gender identity of this character is “inverted,” and is entirely male despite a female
body. On this reading, this is not a book about lesbianism at all, but rather about
transgenderism. 5 However, Hall’s implicit rationale, that is that lesbianism stems from an
inversion of biological gender traits, ignores the reality of feminine lesbians, and also of course
fits neatly within the constraints of the gender binary and compulsory heterosexuality, 6 which are
built upon an acceptance of biological essentialism. Today, with the benefit of the insights of
queer theorists, Hall might be more able to conceive of the naturalness and authenticity of being
5
Nevertheless, it must be noted that most people at the time of the novel’s publication in 1928 were in no doubt that
this was a novel about lesbianism, and many were deeply offended. In fact, the novel became the subject of an
obscenity trial in the UK later in 1928, with the magistrate ruling that the book was obscene in that it defended what
he termed “unnatural practices between women.” Thus, it fitted the definition of obscenity as something which
tended to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences. The magistrate opined that
no reasonable person could say that a plea for the recognition and toleration of inverts was not obscene.
Consequently, all copies of the book were ordered destroyed.
6
In this dissertation, the phrase “compulsory heterosexuality” refers to the theory that the rigid gender binary, in
prescribing just two opposite sexes, also implies that the only authentic way of expressing sexuality is by a union of
these two opposites. The poet Adrienne Rich introduced this phrase in her 1980 essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality
and Lesbian Existence”. Rich linked compulsory heterosexuality to the politics of the patriarchal system. The
concepts of the gender binary and compulsory heterosexuality are clearly natural bed-mates.
30
a masculine woman. 7 But in her time, with no alternatives, she had no choice but to see herself
as one cursed by nature to be an “invert:”
[“Normal” people] sleep the sleep of the so-called just and righteous. When they
wake it will be to persecute those who, through no fault of their own, have been
set apart from the day of their birth, deprived of all sympathy, all understanding.
(Hall 1974: 389)
Radclyffe Hall, 1880-1943 – a trail-blazing masculine woman
Underlying such despair is biological essentialism, and the associated pathologizing of those
who deviate from the norm. Time fortunately went on, and people at last began to question the
7
Alternatively, she might have opted to utilize medical technology to transition to male. Note that the term
“transition” is used in keeping with current practice among the transgendered community in North America. The
term “sex change” has been rejected by most, partly because this clearly implies change, whereas many in this
community contend that they have always been the gender that they transition to. In this community, gender is seen
as psychological, and the outward, physical manifestation is seen as some kind of mistake, which can be corrected
with hormones and surgery when one transitions to a more appropriate physical gender presentation. This
dissertation in no way whatsoever seeks to imply that medically-aided gender transitioning is an inauthentic choice,
as has been argued for example by Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male
(1979). It is suggested that such transitioning should rather be seen as yet another authentic way of expressing
gender.
31
relationship between biological sex and gender – with some beginning to perceive the latter as
primarily a social expression, a group of behaviours adopted because they conform to social
expectations. In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote that:
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or
economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it
is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male
and eunuch which is described as feminine. (De Beauvoir 1974: 281)
This existentialist statement may be perceived as an important part of the beginning of a move
away from biological essentialism, towards an understanding of gender as a social construct.
Naturally, given the fact that it is impossible to tell where nature leaves off and nurture begins in
human beings, as we cannot experiment with them, fierce debate ensued between biological
essentialists and those who thought it was possible to separate sex and gender. Writing in 2000,
Fausto-Sterling summarized this debate:
Over the last few decades, the relation between the social expression of
masculinity and femininity and their physical underpinnings has been hotly
debated in scientific and social arenas. In 1972 the sexologists John Money and
Anke Ehrhardt popularized the idea that sex and gender are separate categories.
Sex, they argued, refers to physical attributes and is anatomically and
physiologically determined. Gender they saw as a psychological transformation of
the self – the internal conviction that one is either male or female (gender identity)
and the behavioural expressions of that conviction. (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 3)
Fausto-Sterling points out that Money’s distinction between gender and sex basically posited the
physical as “sex” and the mental as “gender” (Fausto-Sterling 1999). She also makes the
important point that the notion of sex as an artefact of biology and gender as an artefact of
society was echoed by second-wave feminists in the 1970s, who believed that social institutions
32
are responsible for the gender differences so frequently perceived between women and men, and
moreover that these differences are intentionally promoted, as they perpetuate male dominance
(Fausto-Sterling 2000: 3-4). Fausto-Sterling points out that these feminists, seemingly with little
knowledge of Money’s work, reinvented the term “gender” in a way that was somewhat different
from his usage. In essence, the emphasis in the definition of “gender” moved from the “mental”
to the role of culture (Fausto-Sterling 1999). While it is impossible entirely to separate sex and
gender, because “to a great extent our bodies’ physical appearance (i.e. their physical sex)
locates us in our gendered culture,” the distinction between the two is nevertheless a
conceptually useful one (Fausto-Sterling 1999: 53). As Scott puts it:
Gender seems to have become a particularly useful word as studies of sex and
sexuality have proliferated, for it offers a way of differentiating sexual practice
from the social roles assigned to women and men … . The use of gender
emphasises an entire system of relationships that may include sex, but is not
directly determined by sex nor directly determining of sexuality. (1998: 32)
It was also a politically useful distinction, as Fausto-Sterling points out:
This definitional move had a very specific set of political objectives – to make
more flexible those behavioral traits and social roles that had traditionally been
tied to the body. This move to separate culture from body created room for
cultural change with regard to sex roles. (1999: 53)
Thus, the conceptual distinction between sex and gender places the spotlight on the role of
culture and society in moulding expressions or performances of gender. As a result, this
conceptual move may also be seen as paving the path towards the current situation, where
“masculine women” are becoming possible. For if sex and gender are at all separable, and the
latter is moulded at least in part by culture, rather than by the incontestable domination of the
33
aforementioned scream-favouring XX sex chromosomes, then it becomes conceptually possible
for the XX character to emerge from cowering in the corner, and pick up the cudgels along with
the XY character. It even becomes possible for the XX character to take on the monster, while
the XY character, his biology overwhelmed by some aspect of his environment, cowers
screaming in the corner!
Moreover, this conceptual shift made possible the groundbreaking work of Butler, who
essentially argues that the categories “masculine” and “feminine” are discursively created as
binary opposites within a matrix of heterosexual power. She argues that gender is performative,
unfolding as a series of performances, with no pre-existing subject. Some believe that Butler
goes too far in negating the physical manifestations of gender. For example, Fausto-Sterling for a
long time argued that biological markers, such as genitals, are extremely important in defining
gender. Fausto-Sterling believed that the reality of gender was far more complex than the gender
binary suggests. In 1993 she published “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female are not
Enough,” a proposal that our two-sex system should be replaced with a five-sex system. This
would have added to the categories of male and female the categories of herms (true
hermaphrodites), ferms (female pseudohermaphrodites), and merms (male
pseudohermaphrodites) (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Subsequently, however, Fausto-Sterling has
modified her thinking somewhat. In a more recent article she quotes psychologist Suzanne J.
Kessler, as follows:
The limitation with Fausto-Sterling’s proposal is that … [it] still gives genitals …
primary signifying status and ignores the fact that in the everyday world gender
attributions are made without access to genital inspection …. What has primacy in
everyday life is the gender that is performed, regardless of the flesh’s
configuration under the clothes. (Fausto-Sterling 2004: 138)
34
Fausto-Sterling writes that “I now agree with Kessler’s assessment. It would be better for
intersexuals and their supporters to turn everyone’s focus away from genitals” (Fausto-Sterling
2004: 138). In short, as succinctly summarized by Fausto Sterling, “Labelling someone a man or
a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but
only our beliefs about gender – not science – can define our sex” (2000: 3). Moreover, I argue
that due to this shift towards understanding gender as a social construct, we have reached a point
where it is possible to re-envision women as not entirely victims of their XX sex chromosomes,
so that it is possible for mainstream audiences to applaud female heroes as they boldly romp
across our various entertainment screens.
Just as the traditional gender stereotypes were reflected in literature, so too genderbending heroines have begun to appear in literature. For example, as early as 1946, Carson
McCullers’ entirely tomboy protagonist, Frankie Jasmine, looks back at the wise old age of 12
on her previous summers, when she had been “like president or leader” of the children
attempting to dig swimming pools in their backyards (McCullers 2006: 53). Isabel Miller
features the very masculine lesbian, Sarah Dowling, in her book Patience and Sarah – a novel
that has enjoyed enduring popularity since it was published in 1969. And in 1990, Ann-Marie
MacDonald’s Constance Ledbelly morphs into maleness in the best Shakespearian tradition in
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). In 1992 readers of Rose Tremain’s Sacred
Country met little Mary Ward, standing in a field, thinking: “I have a secret to tell you, dear, and
this is it: I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I’m a boy” (1992: 6). In 1993, Leslie
Feinberg’s stone butch protagonist, Jess Goldberg, morphs from butch to passing male (with the
help of testosterone), and then back to butch, in Stone Butch Blues. And in Yann Martel’s
35
critically acclaimed novel Self, published in 1996, a young man wakes up one day to find that he
is a woman, thus becoming a different kind of masculine woman. Sarah Waters’s characters,
Nancy Astley and Kitty Butler, make a living by being male impersonators in her extremely
successful 1998 novel, Tipping the Velvet – and Nancy even manages to support herself for a
time by working the streets of London as a rent-“boy.” Since then, Tipping the Velvet was made
into a successful BBC television series in 2002, and was released on DVD in the same year. The
protagonist in Jeffery Eugenides’s novel Middlesex (published in the same year as Tipping the
Velvet) Calliope Stephanides, appears to be a woman in terms of both biology and gender
expression, but then turns out to be intersexed due to a 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, and
becomes Cal, a bearded, heterosexual man.
While some novelists write about all kinds of variations of gender expression, others have
reflected changing theories of gender and sex in their explorations of the way in which social
influences construct gender. For example, Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (first published in 1988)
contains an interesting account of how the protagonist, Elaine, is educated into the gender-role
deemed appropriate for her. Social institutions and other girls teach the young girl – and both are
hard and unforgiving taskmasters. Elaine’s initiation into the rituals of femaleness begins in
elementary school. First, she is made to conform by wearing a uniform deemed appropriate for
girls – as Elaine says, “You can’t wear pants to school, you have to wear skirts” (Atwood 1999:
59). Although Elaine doesn’t mention it, we also know that this works both ways – the boys have
to wear pants, and cannot wear skirts. In this way, the lesson begins to be drummed in that girls
and boys are different. For the girls the prohibition on pants is a highly impractical rule in a cold,
snowy climate, forcing Elaine to stuff her skirt down the legs of her snow pants. Next, the lesson
36
is reinforced by separate doors for GIRLS and BOYS, as well as different behaviours – the girls
hold hands, the boys do not. This segregation is so important that breaking one of the rules is
said to result in being strapped:
There’s a front door which is never used by children. At the back are two
grandiose entranceways … inscribed in curvy, solemn lettering: GIRLS and
BOYS. … we have to line up in twos by classrooms, girls in one line, boys in
another, and file into our separate doors. The girls hold hands; the boys don’t. If
you go in the wrong door you get the strap, or so everyone says. (Atwood 1999:
60)
In this way, the gender binary is taught, and strictly enforced. Elaine, who has hitherto spent
most of her time with her brother, reflects on this “educational” process:
I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them,
I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I
sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.
(Atwood 1999: 62)
Elaine alludes to girls’ customs, and boys’ rules. This terminology reflects the stereotype
that girls and women are socially and emotionally more subtle and duplicitous than are boys and
men. Both terms are consistent with the notion of gender as a set of behaviours that is both
taught and enforced by social institutions. The baton is then passed to Elaine’s peers: she makes
friends with Carol, who talks about which boys are in love with her (Carol), and then asks Elaine
which boys are in love with her (Elaine). Interest in this matter has never crossed Elaine’s mind,
but she realizes that she is expected to have an answer, so she replies that she is not sure. In this
way, Elaine begins to act like a girl in order to be accepted by the other girls. Very soon, she is
editing what she says around girls. It is quite clear in this text that Elaine is deliberately,
37
consciously choosing to put on a performance that will gain her social acceptance with her new
female peers. As she reflects:
On Saturdays … I play with Carol and Grace. Because it’s winter, we play mostly
inside. Playing with girls is different and at first I feel strange as I do it, selfconscious, as if I’m only doing an imitation of a girl. But I soon get more used to
it. (Atwood 1999: 69, my emphasis)
This of course recalls Joan Riviere’s description of femininity as a “masquerade,” as well
as Butler’s theory of gender as performativity. In this book, Elaine is taught how to be a girl by a
variety of institutions – her school, her sadistic female friends, and of course the church. When
she goes to Sunday School, the gender binary enforced by regular school is reinforced – “Our
class is all girls” (Atwood 1999: 131). Having laid the groundwork of the mechanisms of
socializing women into a segregated group, Cat’s Eye goes on to show the extreme damage that
women can inflict upon one another, thus making the point that there is no universal sisterhood
of women, despite all the socialization mechanisms. Indeed, Cordelia inflicts much damage on
Elaine, and Elaine’s discomfort with her education into gender roles may be seen as presaging
this damage.
The damage and pain inherent in such prescriptive roles is also experienced by Alice
Munro’s protagonist in her short story “Girls and Boys.” This unnamed girl is coerced into
gender conformity via humiliation – arguably the main method society uses to coerce girls in
general into gender conformity, as well as the main method imposed on Atwood’s Elaine.
Munro’s little girl aspires to be like her father, a fox farmer, rather than like her mother, a
farmer’s wife confined to domestic chores indoors. She is clearly resisting the gender role
38
models offered by her parents – and so she is humiliated into accepting that she is “only a girl”
(Munro 1996: 127). The first time this happens the insult comes from a stranger. The young girl
is helping her father with chores in the fox pen:
One time a feed salesman came down into the pens to talk to him and my father
said, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked
furiously, red in the face with pleasure.
“Could of fooled me,” said the salesman. “I thought it was only a girl.” (Munro
1996: 116)
Yet still the girl perseveres, clearly sensing that the male world is the sphere of importance and
power:
It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary, and peculiarly
depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father’s service, was ritualistically
important. (Munro 1996: 117)
But sadly, her mother undermines her, playing a similar role to that of Elaine’s female peers in
Cat’s Eye, coercing the young girl to accept the limitations supposedly imposed on her by
biology:
I wheeled the tank up to the barn, where it was kept, and I heard my mother
saying, “Wait till Laird [her younger brother] gets a little bigger, then you’ll have
a real help. … And then I can use her more in the house,” I heard my mother say.
She had a dead-quiet, regretful way of talking about me that always made me
uneasy. “I just get my back turned and she runs off. It’s not like I had a girl in the
family at all.” (Munro 1999: 117)
This passage is experienced as painfully realistic by many female readers. As noted by Friedman,
“Though they don’t intend to do so, mothers often end up instilling a sense of learned
39
helplessness in girls” (Friedman 1997: 12). Later, the girl finds there has been good reason for
her feeling of unease, as she begins to realize the truth:
I no longer felt safe. It seemed that in the minds of the people around me there
was a steady undercurrent of thought, not to be deflected, on this one subject. The
word girl had formerly seemed to me innocent and unburdened, like the word
child; now it appeared that it was no such thing. A girl was not, as I had supposed,
simply what I was; it was what I had to become. (Munro 1999: 119, my emphasis)
This realization recalls De Beauvoir’s seminal claim, quoted at length earlier, that “One is not
born, but rather becomes, a woman” (De Beauvoir 1974: 281). Many years later, Butler would
refer to this claim as follows:
If there is something right in Beauvoir’s claim stating that one is not born, but
rather becomes a woman, it follows that woman itself is a germ in process, a
becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As
an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification. Even
when gender seems to congeal into the most reified forms, the “congealing” is
itself an insistent and insidious practice, sustained and regulated by various social
means. (Quoted in Salih 2002: 45)
Both De Beauvoir and Butler thus see gender as a process – something one does, rather than
something one is. Where Butler departs from De Beauvoir is that she takes a further step, by
explicitly disengaging the gender one does from the biological body one is born with. She denies
that there is an inevitable connection between the two, and that a female body necessarily entails
femininity, while a male body necessarily entails masculinity. On the contrary, gender is separate
from biology, merely a cultural construction, and therefore a person with a female body, for
example, can choose to perform masculinity (Salih 2002: 46).
40
It is from this deconstruction and reframing of the concepts that male is equivalent to
masculinity, and female is equivalent to femininity, that the possibilities for alternative
expressions of gender flow. And it is precisely these alternative or transgressive expressions that
have increasingly been embodied in popular media. Indeed, it is apparent that masculine women
of all kinds abound in popular media, especially in television and film. However, for those who
might see this as a feminist triumph over the rigid bonds of the gender binary, it is (sadly) a little
premature to uncork the champagne. There remains work to be done, for the popular
consciousness exhibits an almost schizophrenic split between what it can enjoy in the media and
what it will tolerate in its own home. Indeed, if you ask the average person on the street what she
or he thinks about female masculinity, you are likely to be met with a look of blank
incomprehension at best, or horrified disgust at worst. As pointed out by Halberstam, masculinity
is commonly assumed to be possible and desirable within male bodies only: in her words, there
appears to be a “collective failure to imagine and ratify the masculinity produced by, for, and
within women” (Halberstam 1998: 15). How can the apparent contradiction inherent within this
collective failure of imagination be explained? If “masculine” and “feminine” were discursively
created as binary opposites (Butler 1990: viii), and if this discourse has now been enriched and
broadened in our entertainment media, why do so many people cling stubbornly to a discourse
which is demonstrably redundant? Moreover, why is it impossible for the statement “She’s a
masculine woman” to be merely a statement of fact? Why is it inconceivable for most that
someone might make this statement in a tone of approbation? After all, it is clear that our society
respects the attributes traditionally associated with masculinity, such as courage and strength.
Therefore, it would seem to make sense to admire these attributes in women as well as in men,
41
and to acknowledge their authenticity, rather than perceive such women as merely sad and
imperfect imitations of men.
The answers to all of the rhetorical questions above appear to reside in the fact that
constructions of the self rely heavily on current political discourses, particularly those that are
hegemonic, and that the hegemonic discourse persists in constructing masculinity and the
female-bodied as binary opposites. As Haag (1992) expresses it:
… [I]t is my contention that the relation between ideology and experience in and
of itself has a history: the meaning and relative importance of discourses – both
verbal and symbolic – vary according to historical setting. Particularly in the
modern context, when structures of prohibition and repression are heavily
dependent on objective, scientific formulations of truth – the “normal” and the
“deviant,” for example – it is crucial that historians read ideological material with
an eye to what Foucault labels the micropolitical operations of power: that is, the
extent to which individuals and groups rely on and inevitably reproduce
hegemonic ideologies in their historically specific conceptions of self – the
meaning of “I” carried to ostensibly private, politically impervious experiences.
(552, my emphasis)
I contend that this is the mechanism that enables the seemingly schizophrenic conceptual split
referred to above. Moreover, I contend that this split must be overcome, if women in general are
to escape from the straightjacket constraints of biological essentialism, so that those with XX sex
chromosomes can escape from their ignominious plight, “cowering in corners,” and emerge to
share the limelight of heroism with their XY fellow humans. And it is in this respect that popular
texts are so important, for they have presented to the popular view the female action hero, and
she has been accepted. Now, however, I suggest that a further step needs to be taken – it is
necessary for the implications of these portrayals to be more widely recognized and
acknowledged. For example, if the general public is able to cheer for Sarah Connor in
42
Terminator 2, or for Ripley in Alien, then the next step should surely be to acknowledge that
female masculinity does in fact exist as an authentic variant of gender expression, and moreover
that it is neither abnormal nor pathological. On the contrary, it is just another one of the many
diverse ways in which people are able to perform gender.
The value of these popular texts thus lies in the fact that they provide a stepping stone
from which we may hope to progress to female masculinity being honoured in real life, not just
on screen. Female action heroes are an important part of the contemporary discourse that frames
female subjectivity, and so it follows that if these texts depict female heroes, then over time the
dominant political discourse which continues to privilege male masculinity over all else will
surely become eroded. Indeed, it will surely become more likely that ordinary women will feel
empowered to incorporate the heroism they perceive on their entertainment screens into their
constructions of themselves – to don (metaphorically) the hero’s cape.
It might be argued that Ripley and Sarah Connor are all very well, but most women do
not need to be heroes, neither do they aspire to this state. However, a key point of my
dissertation is that female action heroes are merely the most extreme representations of the
potential liberation that could follow the overcoming of the rigid gender binary that proscribes
female masculinity (among other things). The resistance to female masculinity must be
overcome, for it stands in the way of true gender equality. As Halberstam explains, the “…
widespread indifference to female masculinity … has clearly ideological motivations and has
sustained the complex social structures that wed masculinity to maleness and to power and
domination” (1998: 2). This is the case because the traits considered masculine are also those
43
that shape and lead our world. As I stated in my definition of female masculinity, the masculine
traits to which I specifically refer are claiming the right to authority, displaying strength,
courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence), and very often heroism.
While the traits that are considered quintessentially feminine, such as nurturing and sharing, may
be very pleasant, they do not build empires, nor do they enable the domination of global
commerce. Thus, the defining characteristics of the masculine attributes are that they are
empowering in the public sphere. 8 This is precisely why they are valued, and precisely why they
are so jealously guarded by the reigning power elite in our society, that is, men. Thus, the reason
for the fact that female masculinity is not acknowledged in the hegemonic discourse of our
society becomes abundantly clear: as Halberstam explains, this refusal to acknowledge that
masculinity can be embodied by women is motivated in part by a desire to hide the fact that
masculinity is in fact constructed by those men who embody it – it is not simply the natural and
inevitable consequence of their male bodies. As Halberstam puts it, “female masculinities are
framed as the rejected scraps of dominant masculinity in order that male masculinity may appear
to be the real thing” (1998: 1).
It follows that acknowledging the authenticity of female masculinity constitutes a way to
begin to challenge, and even deconstruct, the male dominance which still structures our
patriarchal society on every level. As Wilchins expresses it: “Rethinking gender … will mean
rethinking our politics” (Wilchins 2002: 15). This then is a key point in this dissertation: in
8
Several feminist theorists, including Nancy Chodorow in The Reproduction of Mothering and Mary Poovey in The
Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, have noted the equation between masculinity and public achievement.
44
highlighting the revisioning of the traditional concept of heroic masculinity that is embodied in
female action heroes in popular culture, I hope to make explicit the liberatory and transformative
potential for all women of this new blend of all that is best in masculinity and femininity.
Moreover, in this dissertation I attempt to contribute to the important project pioneered by
Halberstam, namely that of making female masculinity both more visible and acceptable, by
focusing on the portrayal of female masculinity in recent filmic texts. I share with Halberstam
the premise that “female masculinity is a specific gender with its own cultural history rather than
simply a derivative of male masculinity,” and I set out to contribute in some small way to the
documentation of that cultural history (Halberstam 1998: 77).
At this point, one might question whether it is useful to study female masculinity in
popular culture. Should we not be more concerned with cutting edge gender theory and analysis,
or even with real-life manifestations of gender transgressions? Inness explains:
One reason it is crucial to study the representation of tough women is the
tremendous influence popular culture has upon American society. With the
postmodern blurring of boundaries between high and low culture, greater numbers
of scholars have recognized the importance of studying popular culture in order to
better comprehend our society. Popular sources are invaluable when exploring the
changing image of women in our society. Popular culture does not simply reflect
women’s lives; it helps to create them and so demands critical scrutiny. (Inness
1999: 6-7, my emphasis)
Moreover, many of the filmic texts I analyze are part of the science fiction genre. If popular
culture has a hard time being taken seriously, the problem is often compounded for science
fiction, which may be perceived as fantasy that has limited relevance to real life. However, as
has been pointed out by many renowned theorists, including Darko Suvin in Metamorphoses of
Science Fiction and Ursula Le Guin, science fiction serves a unique purpose as a barometer of
45
social change, for in its speculations about unknown futures it routinely engages with current
problems, suggesting alternatives as yet unrealized. Thus, women’s changing roles in society
often appear first in science fiction. Moreover, “Not only does science fiction reflect women’s
roles, but it has the potential to re-envision and even alter gender roles” (Inness 1999: 104).
Inness (1999) quotes critic Nadya Aisenberg, who has commented that science fiction offers a
broad “opportunity to upset gender stereotypes and, beyond that, present visions of societies
different from the one we inhabit” (Inness 1999: 104). Such a society is, for example, the one
inhabited by Ripley in Alien, in which a woman can take over command of a space ship without
so much as an eyebrow being raised by any of the crew. Similarly, no one was remotely
surprised when Captain Kathryn Janeway authoritatively strode out onto the deck of the Starship
Voyager, in the series by that name. (Janeway’s role as the captain of Voyager is fully discussed
in Chapter Four of this dissertation.)
Thus, I contend that science fiction, so far from being irrelevant, in fact constitutes a
challenge to our current gender binary and the strict (and often ignominious) roles it imposes on
women. Indeed, it may be seen as doing its part to stir up the kinds of transgressive gender
trouble that Butler (1990) called for. Moreover, opening our society’s hegemonic discourse to
the possibility of alternative yet authentic gender expressions not only makes it possible for
greater gender equity to be achieved, but also offers the exciting potential of making our world
more inclusive of those on the sidelines, who often have difficulty finding their place in the
tightly controlled world of the rigid gender binary system, and its concomitant, compulsory
heterosexuality. For example, Butler recalls that she was motivated to write her ground-breaking
book, Gender Trouble (1990), because she wanted to “… counter those views that made
46
presumptions about the limits and propriety of gender and restricted the meaning of gender to
received notions of masculinity and femininity” (Butler 1990: vii). As Butler realized, this
project should ultimately help the many people who do not fit neatly into the strictly defined
gender binary. As Butler puts it, referring once again to Gender Trouble:
… the aim of the text was to open up the field of possibility for gender without
dictating which kinds of possibilities ought to be realized. One might wonder
what use “opening up the possibilities” finally is, but no one who has understood
what it is to live in the social world as what is “impossible,” illegible,
unrealizable, unreal and illegitimate is likely to pose that question. (1990: vii)
A woman who has lived in the social world with a gender expression that is deemed
“impossible” recalls her childhood search for viable role models:
When I was little, I could recognize myself in the faces and screen characters of
Tatum O’Neal, Jodie Foster, and Kristy McNichol. These little tomboys
empowered me to think of myself as a hero. They were strong and smart like the
movie cowboys and gangsters I emulated …. (Quoted in Halberstam 1998: 175)
Jodie Foster as “tomboy” Casey Brown in 1977’s
Candleshoe. Note the tagline, which refers to the
character’s longing for action and a red Ferrari
(the latter an obvious phallic symbol), while at
the same time confirming her repudiation of the
female sphere (in the person of her grandmother)
47
Clearly, this “tomboy” girl found in screen “tomboys” role models that were compatible
with her own reality, her own imagination, and her own preferred mode of gender expression.
Unfortunately, as this child got older, the female role models she had found in films such as
Candleshoe disappeared. She continues:
As a young butch dyke coming out in 1986, I looked for their grown-up
counterparts. I couldn’t find anything. My trio of tomboy heroes hadn’t turned out
like I had. Instead, I turned to Marlon Brando and James Dean as my models of
butchness. 9 (Quoted in Halberstam 1998: 175)
While this young woman could find no adult masculine female role models, in the two decades
since 1986 such female role models have increasingly entered popular culture. Moreover,
feminist theory such as that espoused by Halberstam and Butler has made explicit the falsity of
biological essentialism. However, it still remains for these phenomena to be affirmed within the
hegemonic discourse of our society. No less is required than that this discourse must affirm that
female masculinity is as authentic as male masculinity, or female femininity, or male femininity
– that, in short, gender expressions or performances may be as multifaceted as the weather, and
none of them is less “real” or authentic than another. Indeed, as Butler has made clear, all gender
positions are constructed: none is “natural” or “given” in any way.
In this dissertation, I highlight the female masculinity expressed by female action heroes
in popular, recent filmic texts. I use the term “recent” to denote texts published or released since
1979. This is directly related to the foundation of my argument, that is, the paradoxical fact that
9
In this dissertation, “butchness” is regarded as one specific manifestation of female masculinity – a manifestation
that is most commonly associated with masculine females who are also lesbian.
48
while female masculinity is becoming ever more visible in popular culture, its existence is
nevertheless unacknowledged in the popular consciousness and in most academic discourses.
Thus, the selection of popular texts is intended to substantiate Halberstam’s assertion that female
masculinity is, in fact, far more commonplace than is generally acknowledged. In the broader
sense, this dissertation attempts to contribute to the growing body of analysis of transgressive
gender behaviours in literature, and more broadly, in popular culture. In a more specific sense, it
aims to make more visible the reality of female masculinity in popular culture, in an attempt to
contribute to the eventual validation of this mode of gender expression. The actor Tony Curtis
has been quoted as follows:
Movies are part of my life – part of everybody’s life. That’s where we learn about
life. Watching Cary Grant taught me how to behave with a woman, how to get
dressed at night, how to go to a restaurant and order dinner. (Quoted in Epstein
and Freeman 1995)
Just as movies taught Tony Curtis how to behave with a woman, so too they have taught women
to behave as women. For far too long, movies taught that “cowering in corners” was the way for
a woman to behave. This has changed, in that women have been depicted as a new envisioning
of the traditional action hero, and in so doing have taken on many traditionally masculine
behaviours. This must be acknowledged and validated, so that more women are able to achieve
greater freedom in real life. In this dissertation I aim to make the representation of female
masculinity embodied in the new female action hero more explicit. To do this, I will consider
first the advent of female action heroes in the world of popular film, beginning with Ripley in the
Alien series, which burst onto the screen in 1979. The Alien series and Terminator 2 will be the
primary focus of Chapter 3. I will then consider female action heroes on the small screen, in
Chapter 4. Here, the primary focus will be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although several other
49
female action heroes will also be discussed, notably Xena, Warrior Princess and Captain Kathryn
Janeway. Finally, in Chapter 5, I will draw together the implications of the advent and success of
these female action heroes.
50
Chapter Three:
Female Action Heroes Burst onto the Screen: Ripley and other
Masculine Women in Recent Filmic Texts
Clint Eastwood, the quintessential male action hero –
with two giant guns.
As was noted in the previous chapters, giant strides were taken in feminist and gender
identity theory during the latter half of the twentieth century, so that it became possible for many
to conceive of the gender of human beings as existing in a realm beyond the strict dictates of
biological essentialism. Some went so far as to see all gender as performance. However, despite
such inroads, most action films have traditionally featured stereotypical male heroes such as
those played by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone,
Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude van Damme and Will Smith – all of whom epitomize extreme
51
masculinity, in undeniably male bodies. Recently, however, some action films have begun to
feature female heroes – despite the fact that female heroes by definition are in violation of the
gender binary and its assigned roles. As noted by Hills:
… one of the reasons why action heroines have been difficult to conceptualize as
heroic female characters is the binaristic logic of the theoretical models on which
a number of feminist theorists have relied. … psychoanalytic accounts, which
theorize sexual differences within the framework of linked binary opposition
(active male/passive female), necessarily position normative female subjectivity
as passive or in terms of lack. From this perspective, active and aggressive
women in the cinema can only be seen as phallic, unnatural or “figuratively
male.” (Hills 1999: 38)
Clearly, viewed through a lens that explicitly rejects the binary dualism of gender and
instead sees gender and gender traits as essentially free from the dictates of biology, it is in fact
possible instead to view active and aggressive women in the cinema as entirely natural, and
entirely female. I argue that women in the cinema are blazing a trail for all women, in the sense
that they are claiming the right to be heroic – something that has for a long time been largely
reserved for men. They are living out the dreams of the little girl in Alice Munro’s “Girls and
Boys”:
I arranged myself tightly under the covers and went on with one of the stories I
was telling myself from night to night. These stories were about myself, when I
had grown a little older; they took place in a world that was recognizably mine,
yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice, as
mine never did. I rescued people from a bombed building …. I shot two rabid
wolves who were menacing the schoolyard (the teachers cowered terrified at my
back). I rode a fine horse spiritedly down the main street of Jubilee,
acknowledging the townspeople’s gratitude for some yet-to-be-worked-out piece
of heroism …. There was always riding and shooting in these stories …. (Munro
1996: 113-14)
52
By the end of this story, the little girl has given up her dreams, and has resigned herself to the
tight confines that are prescribed for her by her society – a society that decrees that she may
never be anything but “only a girl” (Munro 1996: 116). However, the female action heroes in
many recent films have been freed from such constraints, and are able to live out dreams of
heroism. Some do so while retaining the outward trappings associated with femininity and
heterosexuality, while others cast these off to varying degrees. In so doing, they illustrate the far
wider realm of gender expressions that are increasingly becoming available to women – and they
illustrate graphically that women indeed can be masculine heroes; that being female-bodied does
not preclude the traditionally masculine behaviours associated with traditional heroism. It is
useful at this point to repeat my proposed definition of female masculinity for easy reference to
the filmic texts and characters I will be examining in this chapter.
Female masculinity is a particular expression or performance of masculinity, an
expression or performance that is entirely authentic, and that consists in femalebodied persons engaging in ways of thought and behaviour that have traditionally
been considered masculine, such as claiming the right to authority, or displaying
strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence),
and very often heroism.
Thus, female masculinity consists in female-bodied persons expressing characteristics that have
traditionally been considered quintessentially masculine. As is apparent from the above list of
ways of thought or behaviour, all of these masculine attributes are intrinsic parts of being heroic.
A review of popular films since 1979 reveals a broad range of films featuring heroic
women. For the sake of analysis, it is useful to divide them three groups. These groups are
53
thematic rather than chronological. I will list them first, to provide a comprehensive overview,
and then expand on the characteristics displayed by female heroes in each group.

Group 1: Films in which beautiful, feminine, heterosexual women assume many masculine
prerogatives, such as power and strength. Examples of these films are Buffy the Vampire
Slayer (1992) and Barb Wire (1996).

Group 2: These are films in which the women are much like those in Group 1, in terms of
behaviour – but they break the mould by not caring whether they break a nail. Examples of
these films are the Alien series and Terminator 2.

Group 3: These are films in which women break all of the above rules. They kick butt, and
they simply do not care how they look. Like Ellen Ripley in the Alien series, they physically
remove feminine markers such as long hair – but they take an extra step in that they
explicitly lay claim to male prerogatives. While Ripley may be said to transcend gender
categories, these women seem rather to cross over and join the men. Examples of such films
are The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and GI Jane (1997).
I will begin with Group 1: Films in which beautiful, feminine, heterosexual women
assume many masculine prerogatives, such as power and strength. Tung (2004) refers to these
women as the “new heroines,” and says of them:
… these heroines all share in common portrayals as “kick-ass” women who can
physically power their way out of dangerous situations using any combination of
54
weaponry and martial arts, all the while maintaining traditional signs of
femininity. (2004: 97)
Yet while these women look like sex objects, they are anything but – as Barb Wire puts
it, “Don’t Call me Babe!”
Group 1 includes films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992); Barb Wire (1996); Tomb Raider
(2001); Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2003); Kill Bill I (2003) and Kill Bill II (2004); as well
as television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 to 2003); Xena, Warrior Princess
(1995 to 2001); and La Femme Nikita (1997 to 2001) (television series will be further discussed
in Chapter 4).
55
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the female heroes in this group of films is that
they combine traits that have for long been considered entirely antithetical, if not oxymoronic.
For example, the Buffy character played by Kirsty Swanson in the 1992 film version of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer takes on all of the most important attributes of the traditional male hero: she
accepts her responsibility to protect the world from vampires, she kills vampires with relish, she
protects her boyfriend (Pike, played by Luke Perry), and in general saves the world. As
writer/creator Joss Whedon says: “The very first mission statement of the show, was the joy of
female power: having it, using it, sharing it” (Gottlieb 2002). But interestingly, when Buffy
experiences hero-fatigue and doubts about her own capabilities, Pike encourages her with these
words: “But Buffy, you’re the guy. You are the chosen guy.” The choice of wording here is very
interesting, as Pike is in effect saying “You’re the man” – using a terminology that is intensely
masculine. Yet when Buffy dances with Pike at the end of the film, the following dialogue
ensues:
Pike: You’re not like other girls, Buffy.
Short silence.
Buffy, slow and serious: Yes … I am.
And then, in the best tradition of the romance movie, they kiss … Thus, Buffy’s heterosexuality
is re-established, minutes after she has finished routing the vampires. Pike is still the boy who
got the girl, and Buffy is still the girl – who just happens to be a brave, undeniably masculineacting superhero. Interestingly, the two have just agreed that neither of them will lead on the
dance floor, indicating that the characters are conscious of needing to forge new gender norms to
match their reality. This is true even though the dance floor may be seen as a traditionally
56
“feminine” sphere, while the killing of monsters such as vampires is a traditionally “masculine”
sphere.
The women in Group 2 behave similarly to those in Group 1. However, they break the
mould by not caring whether they break a nail. While the Buffy character in both the film and the
television series versions garnered a lot of laughs by frequently checking her beautifully
manicured nails after dispatching demons, the women in this group of films do not give a second
thought to maintaining feminine appearances. As a result, they may be seen as moving a step
further out of the rigid constraints of the gender binary, which have traditionally prescribed that
women’s value resides primarily in their feminine attractiveness (as it is this that makes them
valuable to those who really matter – men). Thus, in order to be a “real woman,” it was
necessary to dress in a decorative way, emphasizing feminine attractiveness and signalling
receptivity to men. The women in this group usually ignore this requirement of the gender
binary. However, they remain for the most part heterosexual, or sometimes asexual – as for
example Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series, appears to be (except for a
notable exception in the third film). 1 This is a smaller group of films, likely because it breaks the
gender rules more, and it is epitomized by the two ground-breaking film series, Alien and
1
Ripley bluntly asks Clemens, the prison’s Chief Medical Officer, if he is attracted to her, and then immediately has
sex with him. He says to her, “You’re very direct,” and she replies, “I’ve been out here a long time.” This is the only
time Ripley is ever seen to be a sexual being, and it is notable that she assumes the “masculine” prerogative of
initiating sex.
57
Terminator. Ripley is widely acknowledged to be the first filmic female action hero. Inness
(2004: 3) comments about her:
Ripley demonstrated that women did not have to look as though they stepped
directly from a beauty parlor when they battled foes. Following her lead, Linda
Hamilton, as Sarah Connor starred in The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2:
Judgment Day (1991). A buff figure in the second film, she showed that women
could compete with men as action-adventure heroes.
Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer
Ripley in the first Alien film, 1979
In the first Alien film, Ripley does not yet have the shaved head that later became so
notorious. Instead, her hair is long and wavy, so that even in a military-style jumpsuit, Ripley is
border-line feminine-looking. For the second Alien film, Aliens (1986), her hair has been cut
back to shoulder-length, although she still has a perm.
58
Here it is important to note that long hair is considered an important marker of female
heterosexual attractiveness in the gender binary system. This system is predicated upon the
assumption that heterosexual desire is fuelled by difference – the “bodily differences at the
centre of heterosexual desire” (Ussher 57). Women’s impractically long, often permed hair
stands in stark contrast to the practical, no-nonsense short-back-and-sides sported by many
macho men, and by action heroes such as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude van Damme and Will Smith.
Arnold Schwarzenegger sports a no-nonsense brush cut
in almost all of his action hero roles
Heterosexual desire is assumed to be built largely on such bodily differences, so that
when a woman wears her hair long and/or permed, she is assumed to be signifying that she is
heterosexually available. Ussher (1997) records the experiences of lesbians who choose to wear
long hair and who are then assumed to be part of the heterosexual system: “It’s much easier if
you cut off your hair and act butch. It feels more powerful. With long hair I was always being
59
asked when I went out if I knew this was a gay club” (58). On the other hand, women who for
other reasons are at odds with the gender binary system may wear their hair long in a desperate
attempt to fit into the system. For example, bodybuilding is a sport that is entirely at odds with
the gender binary that holds that men are naturally strong, while women are naturally weak, for
most women bodybuilders are stronger and more muscular than most men. As a result, “[m]any
people continue to see women bodybuilders as rebels or `deviants,’ as freaks of nature” (Coakley
and Donnelly 2004: 243). In an attempt to be perceived as “normal” within the gender binary
system, most competitive women bodybuilders attempt to feminize themselves as much as
possible. Despite the fact that their bodies are lean, muscular and often breast-less, they will
compete with long hair and heavy makeup. These women are well aware that their musculature
is at odds with the gender binary-based stereotype of weak femininity, and therefore know they
are in danger of social rejection (for example, being rejected as freaks or lesbians) if they do not
strenuously strive to appear as much like the stereotype as is possible for someone whose biceps
are the same size as the average man’s thighs. Long hair is an essential part of this attempt,
demonstrating the importance of long hair within the system of heterosexual objectification
(Coakley and Donnelly 2004).
Women bodybuilders typically sport long
“feminine” hair in an attempt to fit their
bulky muscles into the narrow confines
of the heterosexual gender binary
60
In strong contrast to the traditional feminine ideal of long hair, in the third Alien film (Alien 3,
1992) Ripley memorably sports no hair at all, after shaving it off to avoid getting lice in the male
prison she has landed in:
While Ripley thus pays decreasing attention to her “feminine” appearance, this is offset by the
fact that she is, arguably, one of the most beautiful women in the world. For example, in the first
Alien film, despite her (presumably simulated) absence of makeup, Ripley fills out her jumpsuit
quite differently from the men, and with a dash of style, so that there can be no doubt she is
indeed female-bodied.
Here it is necessary to acknowledge that women action heroes confront a danger much
more real than any fictional monster, and one which is not faced by their male counterparts: they
risk being entirely undermined merely by virtue of the fact that they are conventionally beautiful.
For example, Laura Mulvey argues famously that the relations between the look of the camera,
61
the look of the spectator and the looks of characters operate in such as way as to place the (male)
spectator in a position of voyeuristic dominance over women, who comprise the primary
sexualized object of the cinematic gaze. Thus, regardless of the fact that Ripley saves the world
by killing monsters, Mulvey would contend that she is in fact subordinated because cinema by
definition reduces her merely to her quality of “to-be-looked-atness” (relative to the male-centred
look of the camera, and of the spectator). Mulvey refers to the male scopophilic gaze, and
defines the scopophilic instinct as “pleasure in looking at another person as an erotic object”
(1975: 18). She would no doubt see the famous (or infamous) scene in which Ripley strips down
to her underwear 2 as fitting neatly into what she refers to as “that voyeuristic-scopophilic look
that is a crucial part of traditional filmic pleasure” (Mulvey 1975: 18).
Certainly, one could make a strong argument for Mulvey’s view, even for a female hero
in what I have designated Group 2. After all, Weaver is a conventionally beautiful woman, and it
is a very safe presumption that less conventionally beautiful women such as Kathy Bates were
never in contention for the role. Thus, it could be argued that Ripley still panders to film
audiences’ expectations regarding feminine beauty on screen, and even that this negates her
heroic status. However, I would argue that merely looking good in conventional terms does not
undermine Ripley’s heroic status, especially given the fact that she never adorns herself in any of
2
This occurs near the end of Alien – but it should be noted that immediately after this brief scene, she puts on a nononsense space suit and bravely defeats the monster. This point is discussed further below.
62
the ways that have been traditionally prescribed for women to decorate themselves for the male
eye. Moreover, both before and since Mulvey wrote about “that voyeuristic-scopophilic gaze” in
1975, there have been a succession of good-looking men who have played heroes, and no one
suggests that their good looks undermine their heroic status. This is despite that fact that, for
example, the camera’s look (and therefore inevitably the spectators’ eyes) linger very lovingly
indeed on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s naked body, when he bursts in a bubble from the past to
arrive in the present, at the beginning of Terminator. Similarly, at the beginning of Terminator 2,
much is made of Schwarzenegger’s nudity as he strolls into a bar in search of clothes, and is
eyed with naked lust by more than one of the bar patrons. To add to his object status, the bar is
hosting a male strip show, and he is mistaken for one of the performers. However, I have yet to
read a review which lamented that Schwarzenegger had been stripped down to the status of mere
sex object in T2. Similarly, the quintessential male action hero, Clint Eastwood, is remarkable for
his good looks, especially in the films of his youth, while Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, JeanClaude van Damme and Will Smith are scarcely painful to look at. Clearly, women are viewed
and presented differently from men in movies. However, my point is that if men can look good
and still be taken seriously, women should be allowed the same leeway. I argue that Ripley’s
heroic status in Alien is such that she emerges clearly as a hero, irrespective of her good looks.
Anyone at all who bravely confronted the horrific alien depicted in this film would be a hero,
regardless of their physical appearance. The mere fact that the character who does this in this
film is both a woman and conventionally beautiful does not change this, any more than it
63
changes his heroic status when a male action hero happens to be conventionally good-looking
(which is most often the case, Marlon Brando notwithstanding).
Indeed, I would go so far as to argue that Weaver’s good looks add to the impact of her
heroism in the first Alien, inasmuch as she is able to catch the audience off guard. After all, there
had never before been a strong female action hero in any major Hollywood production, and the
unsuspecting 1979 viewer would almost certainly have assumed that Ripley was merely there to
look good and be a love interest for any or all of the male astronauts. (I saw this film when I was
nineteen years old, and as a young connoisseur of both the science fiction and action movie
genres, that was certainly my informed expectation.) However, that misapprehension is rapidly
corrected. Near the beginning of the film, the cargo space vessel Nostromo has landed on an
unknown planet, in response to what appears to be a distress signal. Captain Dallas, Executive
Officer Kane and Navigator Lambert (the only other woman, and also the pilot) have gone off to
investigate. While away, an alien creature resembling a particularly repulsive, bony octopus
attaches itself to Kane’s face. The distressed trio returns to the spaceship, and desperately
demands admittance. In the absence of both Dallas and Kane, Warrant Officer Ripley is the most
senior officer aboard the ship. The following dialogue ensues:
Dallas:
Ripley, let us in!
Ripley:
(Warily) What happened to Kane?
Dallas:
Something has attached itself to him – we have to get him to the
Infirmary right away.
64
Ripley:
(Perturbed) What kind of thing? I need a clear definition.
Dallas:
An organism. (Becoming agitated) Open the hatch!
Ripley:
Wait a minute. If we let it in, the ship could be infected. You know
the quarantine procedure – twenty-four hours for decontamination.
Dallas:
(More agitated) He could die in twenty-four hours – open the
hatch!
Ripley:
(Quietly insistent) Listen to me – if we break quarantine we could
all die.
Lambert:
(Frantically) Could you open the goddam hatch – we have to get
him inside.
Ripley:
(Firmly) No. I can’t do that, and if you were in my position, you’d
do the same.
Dallas:
(Becoming angry) Ripley, this is an order, open that hatch right
now. Do you hear me?
Ripley:
Yes.
Dallas:
(Becoming hysterical) Ripley, this is an order, do you hear me?
Ripley:
(Calm, resolute) Yes, I read you, the answer is negative.
This brief interchange dramatically signals an extremely significant moment in movie history –
the arrival of the first female action hero. From this moment, the audience knows that the true
leader, and the only one who deserves to be commanding this ship, is Ripley. As noted by Hills
(1999: 40):
Ripley is, of course, a highly transgressive, transformative and controversial
character. As, arguably, the first “action heroine” of her type, she entered our
cultural imaginary almost twenty years ago and continues to be a significant
cultural icon. Whilst there have been many examples of active women in action
genres (ranging from Emma Peel of The Avengers to the fashionable heroines of
65
Charlie’s Angels) the action heroine as I analyze her here emerged with Ripley
from the Alien series. Alien is what Thomas Schatz calls a “new Hollywood
blockbuster”: a complete package with elaborate special effects, thirty-million
dollar budget, expensive pre-release publicity and, most importantly, huge boxoffice success. It generated a series of (so far) three sequels, and Ripley has
become one of Hollywood’s most visible action heroines.
Moreover, the audience learns that Ripley is to be the hero in a context that subverts the
traditional gender binary. Dallas is being “feminine” in letting his feelings about the needs of his
fallen comrade get ahead of proper protocol and safety. In addition, he becomes hysterical 3 –
behaviour which was previously almost exclusive to female film characters, and which was
certainly never in evidence from male captains of space ships. By contrast, Ripley remains calm
and focused. Ripley is being “masculine” in the sense commonly seen in male action heroes. As
Inness (1999) puts it:
Ripley is tough because she is willing to sacrifice her personal wish to save her
fellow crew member for the greater good of the ship and its crew …. Here, we
notice one common characteristic of the tough women in space. Ripley adheres to
a higher code of morality than her fellows, and she is able to make the tough
decisions no one else will. (106)
3
Hysteria has long been associated almost exclusively with women. The word refers to emotional instability caused
by trauma. A pertinent example would be shrieking in a corner while an alien attacks someone else – as mentioned
before, this was the traditional response of women in science fiction films, while the male hero attempted to fight
back. The sexist meaning of the word is abundantly clear from its Greek origins, the word hysterikos. Hippocrates
coined this term to apply to madness and suffocation in women, caused by a lack of sexual intercourse, leading to
their uteri becoming too light and travelling upwards to compress vital organs such as the heart and lungs. Various
feminists have commented on this word; interestingly in the context of this dissertation, some of them have linked
the phenomenon to gender roles. For example, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg suggested that hysteria arose due to
intolerable ambivalence towards society’s gender roles, and is also an unconscious mechanism which the body can
use to resist gender roles. Luce Irigaray argued that Freud never constructed an adequate theory of female sexuality,
and that it this lack which allows women to labelled as hysteric (Lukinbeal and Aitken 1998).
66
Here, Ripley claims the authority to make the choice to save the four crew members on board, as
well as the ship and its cargo. It is important to note that in so doing, Ripley steps beyond the
confines of the concerns that have traditionally been assumed to be biologically prescribed for
women, that is, the well-being of the domestic unit, as opposed to the well-being of society in
general. A quintessential heroic quality is acting on behalf of other people, not just oneself or
one’s family. In the traditional view of the gender binary, women are effectively precluded from
heroism because they are assumed to be biologically programmed to take care of and protect
their families, with the concomitant flaw of having minds so limited by domesticity that they are
unable to act for the sake of the “big picture.” This quality of women may be ascribed to social
conditioning that trains women to place the preservation of their families above all else.
Alternatively, in extreme views such as biological determinism, it may be seen as genetic
programming – the “maternal instinct” which supersedes all other imperatives. Here, however,
Ripley makes the “tough decision” to put the needs of the many ahead of the needs of the few,
and in so doing assumes a quintessential heroic quality. She continues to do this throughout the
duration of the series of Alien films.
In assuming the responsibility for the ship, unlike countless female film characters before
her, Ripley does not for a second bow to male authority, or question her own wisdom when it is
challenged by someone who is not only a man, but also her commanding officer. If the crew had
listened to Ripley, she would have saved the day and they would all have been spared grisly
deaths (apart from Kane, who was already doomed, and Ripley, who eventually is the sole
67
survivor). However, Science Officer Ash (who later turns out to be a robot programmed to bring
the alien creature back to earth, regardless of consequences) breaks protocol by ignoring Ripley’s
orders, and lets the threesome in – and the nightmare begins. As the film progresses, the
audience is introduced to arguably the most frightening creature that has ever scarred the silver
screen – a creature that gave rise to the cultural catch phrase (used on the posters advertising the
movie), “In space, no one can hear you scream.” And while Ripley is heard to scream once or
twice, she is unfailingly courageous, and eventually defeats the monster with a combination of
grit, intelligence and a perfectly aimed shot. No male hero had ever done a better job – and the
female action hero was well and truly launched.
Ripley not only launched the female action hero, but also epitomized what I have termed
Group 2 female action heroes: she is conventionally beautiful, but pays not so much as lip
service to the societal dictates that women should focus their intelligence and energy on making
themselves heterosexually attractive. The women in the group I define as Group 3 take this
another step further. Like Ripley in Alien, they physically remove feminine markers such as long
hair – but they also take an extra step, in that they explicitly lay claim to male prerogatives.
While Ripley may be said to transcend (or perhaps merely ignore) gender categories, these
women seem rather to cross over and join the men. This group is epitomized by films such as GI
Jane (1997) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). In GI Jane, Lieutenant Jordan O’Neil (played
memorably by Demi Moore) attempts to invade the all-male preserve of the US Marines. She
puts her femininity behind her, symbolically, when she shaves off all of her long hair to become
68
“one of the boys.” She then participates in a training experience reminiscent of the film Rocky,
culminating in a scene in which she out-machos the most macho of men by performing pushups
with one arm. By this time, her periods have stopped, and her body is looking noticeably hard
and muscular. Thus, she is literally becoming more androgynous, and her appearance is
beginning to conform more to the masculine ideal than the feminine. Most notably, she emulates
Charly in the previous year’s The Long Kiss Goodnight when she tells the master chief to “Suck
my dick!”
This memorable scene occurs during one of O’Neil’s many clashes with Master Chief
John James Urgayle. O’Neil’s squad has just been taken hostage in a simulation, and O’Neil has
engaged in bloody hand-to-hand combat with Urgayle. While some of the spectators are shocked
that Urgayle is hurting a woman, O’Neil takes it “like a man.” She survives the punches, and
manages to kick the Master Chief, even though her arms are handcuffed behind her back. As she
does so, she screams “Suck my dick!” eliciting the admiration of her male comrades, who then
join her in a group chant of “Suck my dick!” The solidarity of the squad and its toughness under
pressure is solidified in this group expression of contempt for the “enemy.” Moreover, O’Neil
herself is transformed by this moment:
In their essay about the gun as metaphorical masculinization in GI Jane, Tucker
and Fried rightly observe that it is at this moment, as she “basks in the cheers and
acceptance of her fellow recruits, [that] O’Neil’s transformation into a rugged,
individualistic techno-male is complete.” (Brown 2004: 56).
69
This scene (unsurprisingly) has elicited mixed reactions. Notably, an explicitly queer
commentator states that it is a moment when gender roles are challenged as O’Neil lets “her
butch side shine. It’s a moment when a woman taking on the male gender role is celebrated and
it’s not only cinematically exciting but also profoundly moving” (Nova 2007).
Similarly, while Samantha/Charly in The Long Kiss Goodnight never looks anything but
attractive, she adopts an extremely macho screen presence as Charly, and in the climatic
moments of the action portion of the film, shouts “Suck my dick, every last one of you bastards!”
as she drives a huge truck straight towards her enemies, unconcerned by the explosions all
around her. Her feminine attractiveness recedes into the background in the face of this explicit,
transgressive appropriation of male power. Williams notes that the most cursory knowledge of
psychoanalysis informs us that “dick” equates to power – that power to which all aspire,
regardless of anatomy. In the same vein, Brown (2004) argues that when Charly and O’Neil lay
claim to the traits of maleness, they:
… gain access to a form of power (both physical and social) that has been
systematically denied to women while simultaneously demonstrating that the
association of “maleness” with “power” is not innate but culturally defined since
anyone can mobilize even the most basic of male privileges: the privilege to assert
phallic authority through reference to an actual phallus. (57)
In the discussion above, I differentiated groups of female action heroes with reference to
physical presentation – the degree to which the heroes attempt to conform to the traditional
social requirement associated with the gender binary, that is, the requirement for women to
70
present themselves as decorative and “feminine,” so that men will find them attractive. However,
it is notable that this discussion led to the point where, in Group 3, some women who eschew
such requirements simultaneously lay claim to male traits. This brings me to a key point argued
by many critics – the contention that female heroes are not transgressive or liberatory at all, but
are merely men in drag. For example, Inness (1999) argues that:
Ripley is forced into femininity’s opposite, masculinity, which makes her like a
man. In our culture femininity and masculinity are in opposition and therefore
exclude one another. Thus toughness for Ripley is not some new feminist ideal,
where she takes the best parts of femininity and masculinity and forges them into
a type of toughness that has not yet been seen. Instead, Ripley can be perceived as
a man in a woman’s body, reason enough for critics to complain about her being
just another Rambo figure. (Inness 1999: 107)
However, I argue that in making this point, Inness (1999) is unduly constrained by the gender
binary, specifically the psychoanalytical model which Hills (1999) identifies as positioning
“female characters as the passive, immobile and peripheral characters of Hollywood action
cinema” (Hills 1999: 38), and men as their exact opposite. The point is that Ripley transcends
this artificial, socially-constructed divide, thus transgressing cultural gender codes and opening
up “interesting questions about the fluidity of gendered identities” (Hills 1999: 38). Hence,
Ripley is not “forced into femininity’s opposite.” On the contrary, she voluntarily embraces a
gender expression that is – or potentially could be – available to all women, a gender expression
that includes traditionally masculine behaviors such as aggression towards enemies, concern for
the greater good, claiming the right to authority, decisive leadership, assertiveness and courage,
71
but which at the same time does not deprive Ripley of the ability to express feminine behaviours,
such as caring for cats or children.
In order to argue her point, Inness (1999) ignores the hour in which Ripley battles
monsters with steely courage, and instead focuses on the penultimate scene of Alien, in which
Ripley appears clad in very scanty underwear. She perceives this as emphasizing the fact that
Ripley “is a girl” (Inness 1999: 107), and concludes that ultimately the “film seems
uncomfortable leaving viewers with an image of Ripley that is too tough” (Inness 1999: 107).
However, what Inness (1999) (as well as many other critics who have singled out this particular
scene as evidence of Ripley being transformed into an object, or transformed back into
femininity) glosses over is what happens next. Ripley realizes that the alien is still very much
alive and on board the space ship and immediately dons appropriate apparel to wage a final battle
with the alien. In this battle she unequivocally defeats the alien, and finally ejects it into space.
Like so many creatures that have dared to take on male heroes, this beast dies screaming – but
this time, it is a woman who administers the death blows, and saves the earth from a devastating
invasion (as the creature’s ultimate destination was earth).
I argue (at the risk of butchering Inness) that in these two final scenes, Ripley’s toughness
is indeed “some new feminist ideal,” in which she takes the best parts of femininity and
masculinity and forges them into a type of toughness that has not yet been seen. In doing so, she
transgressively draws together the realms of femininity and masculinity. Yes, she is both
72
vulnerable and alluring in her underwear. Thus, for a few brief (albeit memorable) moments, she
enters the traditional realm of femininity. However, when circumstances change (that is, when
she realizes the alien enemy is still on board), she is able to shift gears, effortlessly assuming –
both literally and metaphorically – the apparel of the hero, and calmly dispatching the monster.
Ripley thus adapts flexibly to changing circumstances, deploying appropriate behaviours to deal
with them. In this, she epitomizes Deleuze’s notion of “becoming” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
232–309). In Deleuzian terms, one might say that Ripley’s actions exceed our concepts of
feminine passivity by presenting the novelty of Ripley exhibiting behaviours traditionally
associated with masculinity and with men, and this novel representation then actualizes an idea
which is unfettered by prior categories based on an acceptance of the gender binary. Ripley’s
gender expression is more transgressive than if she were merely “acting like a man.” Instead, she
is acting like, or performing as (and at the same time becoming) something entirely new: a
female-bodied person who freely chooses from a range of hitherto gender-linked behaviours to
create a new mix that enables her to be a new kind of hero. She becomes a specifically female
hero, not just a woman behaving like the archetypal male hero. It should also be noted here that
Ripley epitomizes Judith Butler’s notion of gender roles as performativity, for she can switch
from performing femininity so well that hosts of critics have been blinded by it (as in the
penultimate scene where she strips to her underwear), to performing masculinity so well that she
is able to save the world (as in the final scene where she kills the alien queen).
73
This blending of gender roles is of course not an easy mix to accomplish. It is not only
Inness (1999) who is constrained by the stark opposites of the gender binary. They are deeply
embedded in our culture, and hence in all of us. In this regard, The Long Kiss Goodnight is an
interesting film, as its central focus appears to be the conflicts inherent in transgressing the
gender divide and daring to attempt to embrace behaviours from both sides within one human
being. The hero, Samantha aka Charly (played winningly by the conventionally lovely Geena
Davis), epitomizes a key conflict. As noted in Chapter 1, hitherto “action heroines have been
difficult to conceptualize as heroic female characters … [because of] the binaristic logic of …
theoretical models” (Hills 1999: 39). As Hills (1999) points out, even many feminist theorists
have been unable to conceive of female heroes because of the constraints of such models.
Samantha/Charly epitomizes the conflicts engendered by this strict binaristic logic. The first hint
is of course that she has two names, one of which is masculine, and the other feminine. She does
not know which is her “real” name, as she has amnesia. Throughout the film, she wrestles with
the conflict between her masculine side and her feminine side, like a latter-day Jekyll and Hyde.
The possibility of reconciling the two does not come to the fore until the very end of the film.
Indeed, Brown (2004) has gone so far as to argue that in The Long Kiss Goodnight, the “real plot
is the gender negotiation of feminine Samantha into masculine Charly and then the final attempt
at a reconciliation between the two persons at film’s end” (55).
Clearly, a successful reconciliation could be liberatory, but the liberatory potential of the
film has been dismissed by some critics. For example, Brown (2004) states that the “self-
74
discovery of The Long Kiss Goodnight is a literal stripping away of the feminine masquerade
embodied by Samantha in favor of the underling masculine character of Charly” (54). However,
Brown (2004) fails to notice that when Charly goes into action to rescue her young daughter,
Cataline, she effectively draws together the two parts of her personality that Brown sees as
mutually exclusive – the feminine and the masculine. Femininity is routinely linked to the
maternal imperative, and when the more masculine Charly first emerges from the more feminine
Samantha (as the latter regains her memory of her former persona), her first reaction is to walk
away from her maternal responsibilities. In this, she shows herself to be a victim of binaristic
gender thinking. However, later in the film she is able to reconcile the masculine and the
feminine, using the masculine traits associated with an action hero to rescue her daughter and
dispatch the bad guys. Thus, Charly/Samantha takes the action hero to a new and I would say a
better level: a level where the action hero can embody the best of both feminine and masculine
traits. This film therefore underscores the point that although it is difficult for one person to
perform actions that are conventionally attributed to both sexes, it is not impossible – and that
the new female action hero succeeds admirably in doing precisely this.
It is clear that the essence of the transformative power of the female action hero is that
she makes possible a new way of behaving, rather than a new way of appearing. Thus, while my
exposition of the three groups above emphasizes physical appearance, my key points about
female action heroes pertain to far more than the merely physical. While this aspect attracts
much attention, the most important point is that many female action heroes exhibit behaviours
75
that transcend the traditional binary gender divide, thus making possible a far richer and more
interesting heroic archetype. However, I argue that what we may take from the wide range of
physical manifestations of female action heroes is that it is possible to be a female action hero,
regardless of how one looks. This is a liberatory way of looking at it. The message it sends to
young female viewers is clear: you can look like Barbie, and still kick butt like Rambo. You can
have beautiful nails, but still be a leader. On the other hand, if you explicitly don’t want to look
like Barbie, that too is your prerogative. Moreover, given the clear examples set by cool-headed,
intelligent leaders such as Ripley, the other lesson is that women no longer merely have the right
to change their minds – they have the right to have minds. This of course challenges
conventional assumptions, which equate men with the cognitive, and deny rationality to women.
In short, the truly exciting thing about female heroes is that some of them have broadened
the understanding of what it is to be a hero, and in so doing have revisioned not only women, but
also the traditional hero archetype. They have done this by incorporating a range of traditionally
female behaviours into the representation of a hero, such as the maternal instinct, flexibility,
sharing and a talent for and enjoyment of communication. Another example of a female hero
revisioning the heroic archetype by incorporating the maternal instinct may be found in the very
first female hero, Ripley. In the first film, Alien, Ripley invests more than a little energy in
saving her cat. In the second film, Aliens, this is taken a step further, when Ripley rescues a little
girl, Newt, and later risks her own life to save her from the alien queen. It is also notable here
that little Newt is a hero in her own right, having exhibited the toughness to survive while all of
76
the other colonists, including her parents and her brother, have been killed by aliens. This is a
point routinely ignored in commentaries on the film, most of which perceive Newt merely as a
victim to be saved. Moreover, as pointed out by Inness (1999), some critics have taken Ripley’s
concern for Newt to undermine her status as a hero. However, such critics missed the point that
Ripley was a hero long before she met Newt, and remains a hero long after Newt dies. Thus, she
is not a stereotypical woman motivated only by maternal concerns. Indeed, her primary concern
is always to save the earth – like all of the hyper-rational, heroic captains of star ships in the Star
Trek series, Ripley remains always focused on the greater good. However, I argue that she
broadens the concept of the action hero by being able to incorporate within it her maternal
concern for young Newt. Moreover, in her interactions with Newt, Ripley is able to show a wider
range of emotions than have traditionally been available to (male) action heroes. For example,
Newt says, “Ripley, I’m scared” – and Ripley replies, simply, “Me too.” Thus, Ripley has the
normal emotions that anyone would have while trapped in a building surrounded by thousands of
hostile, powerful monsters – notably fear. Unlike many action heroes before her, she is able to
both feel fear and admit to it. However, unlike the screaming, cowering women of science fiction
films before her – such as Anne Francis as Altaira Morbius in Forbidden Planet (Wilcox 1956),
who screams helplessly as the monster created by her father’s sub conscious threatens her loved
ones – she is not incapacitated by her fear. Instead, she remains capable of fighting for her life
and the lives of her companions, especially Newt.
77
Newt, the heroic girl in Aliens
As in the first Alien film, Ripley fights to save others. However, this is a different, more
mature Ripley. She has evolved to become a more confident hero. For example, the first time she
is given orders by the inexperienced, out-of-his-depth Commanding Officer Gorman, she simply
ignores him – she is going in to save the embattled marines from the alien’s nest, regardless of
his orders. Thus, she has progressed from the emotional immaturity she showed at the beginning
of the first Alien film, when she was merely a company woman taking orders. She no longer
trusts the company (which is synonymous with power, and thus may be read as symbolic of the
patriarchy), nor does she take orders unless they make sense for the preservation of life in the
battle against the aliens. However, she continues to learn from others, such as Corporal Hicks,
when he teaches her how to handle a large gun (one of many obvious phallic symbols adroitly
handled by Ripley in this film). However, there is no male patronizing going on here. She tells
him coolly: “I can handle myself” and he readily agrees: “Yeah, I noticed.” She also learns from
Newt, who directs them through the heating ducts to the landing field. Thus, we have the
78
transgressive situation of a little girl leading soldiers to safety – again underlining the heroic
status of this small girl.
Later, in the third Alien film, Alien 3, Ripley is the only woman on the planet, and yet it is
to her that the embattled prisoners turn for leadership when their lives are threatened by aliens.
This film has been much criticized, with allegations that Ripley compromises her heroic status
by being sexualized as the only woman in the prison, and also by killing herself at the end, so
that “her death serves as a warning to women who, like Ripley, might rebel against gender
constraints and adopt tough personas” (Inness 1999: 113). However, I would argue that these
allegations are misguided. On the contrary, Ripley shows her courage by managing to emerge as
a leader in such threatening circumstances. In the previous Alien films, she only had to fear the
aliens. In this film, she is in danger from the humans as well. However, she continues undaunted,
displaying her heroic status in these extremely challenging circumstances. In this I suggest that
she transcends the heroic levels of male heroes, in that male action heroes never have to carry out
their heroic missions while at the same time worrying about being raped by a prison-full of
criminals. Moreover, her death at the end of the movie is a heroic self-sacrifice, not a lesson to
other women to kowtow to gender norms. Throughout the first three Alien films, Ripley is
unswervingly committed to the greater good, in the best heroic tradition – and in her final act in
the third film, she takes this commitment to its ultimate expression. In addition, by doing this,
she endeavours to keep out of the (male) hands of the Company a potential weapon that would
undoubtedly be used to devastating effect (that is, the alien that is incubating inside her). She
79
falls backward into a vat of boiling lead, and as she does so, the incubating alien bursts out of
her. She uses her last ounce of dying strength to hold onto the alien and make sure that it dies
with her, so the company cannot get it. As she says: “I don’t think so.” In the event, this alien is
eventually revived by cloning, in the fourth film. However, this is hundreds of years in the
future, so that Ripley’s efforts are not entirely in vain – although it must be conceded that the
film industry’s commercially-motivated action in cloning Ripley for a fourth film do detract
somewhat from Ripley’s self-sacrifice at the end of the third film.
Like Ripley, the character of Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton) in the Terminator
films also maintains an interesting balance of traditionally feminine qualities with traditionally
male qualities. Most notable, of course, is that she has a dual motivation: to save the world and to
protect her son (who is destined to save the world). She thus combines the public and domestic
within the ambit of one person, and takes responsibility for what are viewed as the traditionally
male heroic spheres, as well as the traditionally female domestic ones. However, when the first
Terminator film begins, Sarah Connor is a stereotypically feminine woman, dewy-eyed,
conventionally lovely, and curvaceous. She works as a waitress (ineptly) and shares an apartment
with another young woman. One day, a terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), a
80
cyborg, 4 arrives from the future to kill her, and thus ensure the victory of machines over humans
in the future war (by ensuring her son is never born, and thus cannot lead the surviving humans
to victory). Sarah’s life descends into immediate chaos, as she flees for her life pursued by a
relentless and immensely powerful killing machine. Just then, another being arrives from the
future – a human named Kyle Reece, who has been sent by Sarah’s future son, John Connor, to
protect her. Initially, the relationship between the two of them is stereotypical. As in Alien, the
audience is lulled into expected that the male hero will save the passive female victim –
especially when she looks at Reece with big dewy eyes and asks pathetically, “Can you stop
him?”
The first time Sarah Connor assumes control is when she realizes that Reece has been
injured, and insists on treating his wound. Thus, she takes her first step towards power in the
traditionally female roles of healer and caretaker. Reece then tells her that he volunteered to
come through time to meet her because she is a legend, the one who trained the future champion
of humanity, John Connor – but Sarah finds this hard to believe. The first time she is handed a
gun, she puts it down in disgust – but then almost immediately picks it up again. This classic
4
This neologism refers to a cybernetic organism, a machine cloaked in human flesh, comprising artificial and
natural systems. In 1960, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline conceived of an enhanced human being who could
live in extraterrestrial environments, and suggested: “For the exogenously extended organizational complex
functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term ‘Cyborg'” (Clynes and Kline
1960: 26). More recently, the term “cyborg” has been given much wider exposure by Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg
Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1991). Interestingly in the
context of this dissertation, Haraway argues that the cyborg is outside gender.
81
phallic symbol, used to connote aggressive masculinity in countless films, is the almost
immediate object of her curiosity. This is the first clue that Sarah may morph from bimbo to
hero. Very soon she is learning to make bombs, under the tutelage of Reece. She then takes on
the traditionally masculine role when she initiates sex with him (the act which will lead to the
birth of her son John, who is destined to save the world). As with Ripley before her, the only
time Sarah is depicted having sex is when she herself initiates the act. Moreover, when they have
sex, she is on top – again appropriating the traditionally masculine role. If that does not suffice to
make it clear that the gender-binary table has been turned, the very next morning she saves
Reece from certain death, by dragging him out of the way of a speeding juggernaut driven by the
Terminator.
Shortly thereafter, both Sarah and Reece think that the Terminator is dead – but then he
rises again. Sarah screams just once, before she begins to drag the injured Kyle away, and shouts
at him: “On your feet, soldier, on your feet!” Clearly, Sarah is becoming a hero, is adapting to
circumstances, and is embracing within herself both feminine and masculine attributes in order to
deal with her radically altered circumstances. Thus, she is “becoming,” in the sense proposed by
Deleuze: for Sarah, two systems (masculine and feminine) are coming together to form an
emergent system – in this case, the new female action hero. Moreover, as with Ripley, we may
relate Sarah’s adaptability to Butler’s work, noting that Sarah performs femininity when this
suffices for the needs of her life, but is able to quickly adapt and perform masculinity when
extreme circumstances demand it. This culminates in the penultimate scene of the film, when she
82
leads the Terminator into a trap, and triumphantly tells him: “You’re terminated, fucker.” In the
next and final scene, she is driving through the Mexican desert in an orange Renegade jeep, with
a large German Shepherd in the back of the jeep, dictating memoirs to her unborn son. Her hair
has less curl, and she sports a no-nonsense headband. When she stops to put gas in her jeep, a
local tells her: “There’s a storm coming in.” Looking resolute, she agrees: “I know” – and then
drives off towards the mountains. Of course, the storm to which Sarah refers is the battle to save
humanity from nuclear holocaust and domination by machines, and it is perfectly clear to the
viewer that the dewy-eyed waitress has morphed into a fearless warrior, ready to do whatever it
takes to champion humanity. The juxtaposition of Sarah’s hairstyle and choice of vehicle with
her pregnant state indicates a transgressive bringing together of the supposed opposites of
masculinity and femininity. This sets the scene for the sequel, Terminator 2, in which Sarah will
champion humanity with a combination of feminine and masculine strengths. On the one hand,
she will strive to both protect and train her son, so that he will be fit for the possible battle in his
own future. On the other hand, the opening scenes of T2 show Sarah demonstrating a masculine
level of strength by performing pull-ups (an exercise that takes great upper body strength, and
that is beyond the power of most women). Once again, as in GI Jane, a woman takes on a key
marker of gender difference: muscular strength.
Indeed, the contrast between the Sarah Connor characters of the first and second
Terminator films is dramatic. She has lost her curves, replacing them with wiry muscles that give
her body and face an androgynous cast. She also has lost her “bubbly” lightness of spirit, and
83
instead has a brooding darkness that occasionally explodes into acts of violence. She has become
very much the antithesis of the stereotypically attractive, feminine woman – but she has also
become an appropriate embodiment of someone who carries the weight of the world on her
shoulders, and who knows that only her own heroism and the heroism she manages to teach her
son can save the world and all of its people. Sarah demonstrates an interesting reconciliation of
the conflict between the needs of the many and the needs of the few, referred to above in relation
to Ripley. Contrary to those who espouse biological determinism, Sarah is not narrowly focused
only on her domestic unit – if she were, she would presumably be focused on making a nuclear
bomb shelter somewhere in Alaska. Instead, she embraces the responsibility to save the world, in
the best heroic tradition of seeing the big picture. However, she also is resolutely focused on the
welfare of her son, working indefatigably to avert the nuclear holocaust that will propel him into
the horrific role of leader of the fight against the murderous machines. In this she is undeterred
by anything; not even the ontological paradox that if the nuclear holocaust unleashed by the
machines never occurs, Reece will never be sent back in time to try to avert it, and therefore will
not have the opportunity to father Sarah’s son, so that the son she is working to protect will not
even exist.
As an example of Sarah’s acts of physicality and violence, she leaves the men and boys
behind in the desert, racing off alone in their stolen station wagon to kill Miles Dyson, the man
who is fated to invent Skynet – which in turn will lead to the machines taking over the world.
Sarah is neither insane nor a murderer, but she plans to kill Dyson for the greater good. As noted
84
above, this is a characteristic of the traditional male hero, who usually takes social well-being
into account, rather than only his own family’s well-being, as women are traditionally supposed
to do. In this scene Sarah takes on the difficult task of balancing all of these spheres. She plans to
murder Dyson to save the world, but leaves her son out of it to spare him the sight of his mother
committing murder. In addition, killing Dyson might ultimately spare her son from an extremely
unpleasant future. She shoots at Dyson through the window, and misses because he happens to
move. She invades the home, but then finds that she cannot finish off the quivering, injured man
in front of his wife and child. She has the gun aimed at him, and she says, “It’s all your fault, I
can’t let you do it, I won’t let you do it.” But then she hesitates, and it is apparent that a great
struggle is raging in her head. With both hands clasped around the phallic gun, her “feminine”
side comes through. As she struggles through those long seconds, I suggest that she is evolving
into a new kind of action hero – a hero who blends the masculine attributes, which have brought
her here to save the world singlehandedly, with the feminine qualities of empathy and caring that
make it impossible for her to kill an innocent man in front of his family. Instead, her mind races
to evolve, to devise a different way to save the world. She sits down, rendered almost cationic by
the struggle. Her son arrives, and she cries in his arms. He is comforting, in a way more often
associated with women. Interestingly, John is learning to be a feminine and masculine hero from
his mother – not just a masculine hero. As the new breed of hero, she has more to teach him than
just the mechanics of guns and explosives. This suggests another interesting and transformative
possibility – that the new way in which women embody heroes will reframe the ways in which
men are able to be heroes, by creating new archetypes which make wider gender variations and
85
combinations possible for everyone. On the one hand, Sarah illustrates Halberstam’s point that
masculinity may be authentically enacted by female-bodied people. On the other hand, her son’s
response to her illustrates Butler’s point that anyone may authentically enact any kind of gender
behaviour.
The new female action heroes in recent films illustrate many of the points made by
gender theorists. They unequivocally demonstrate Halberstam’s point that masculinity can be
enacted by female-bodied people. They clearly show that people may perform different kinds of
gender behaviours, depending on circumstances and personal choices. Thus, they lay to rest the
old assumptions of biological essentialism, just as surely as they dispatch aliens, terminators, and
other assorted bad guys. Moreover, they adapt speedily and flexibly to changing circumstances,
and in this way they illustrate Deleuze’s notion of transformativity, becoming a new, emergent
system by bringing together two systems – the masculine and the feminine, which thus turn out
not to be mutually exclusive, but in fact surprisingly complementary and compatible. The female
action heroes of recent filmic texts are “feminine” in that they display maternal instincts and
empathetic care. However, they are also “masculine” in that they engage in ways of thought and
behaviour that have traditionally been considered masculine, such as claiming the right to
authority, or displaying strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and sometimes
violence), and very often heroism. Thus, they go beyond traditional heroism, and behave as
something entirely new – as female-bodied people who freely choose from a range of hitherto
gender-linked behaviours to create a new mix that enables them to be a new kind of hero – a
86
female hero, not just a woman behaving like the archetypal male hero. As will be shown in the
next chapter, female action heroes on the small screen have been similarly transformative and
transgressive, and have in fact expanded the definition of hero even further.
87
Chapter Four:
Women Heroes of the Small Screen:
Boldly Going Where no Women Have Gone Before
All of the texts I am evaluating fall into the category either of fantasy, or of science
fiction. In this dissertation I suggest that science fiction may be seen as a sub-genre of fantasy,
although the relationship between fantasy and science fiction is highly contested – for example,
some critics maintain that fantasy may be seen as a sub-genre of science fiction. It is beyond the
scope of this dissertation to attempt to resolve this issue, but it is useful to briefly consider the
nature of fantasy, as well as the nature of science fiction. Timmerman (1983) suggests that there
are six traits which must be present in order for a work to be classified as fantasy literature: “the
use of traditional Story, the depiction of Common Characters and Heroism, the evocation of
Another World, the employment of Magic and the Supernatural, the revelation of a Struggle
between Good and Evil, and the tracing of a Quest” (4). I suggest that science fiction may be
seen as one form of fantasy literature, with the distinction that instead of magic and the
supernatural, there is a focus on science and technology (Merrick 2003).
It is significant for my dissertation that the second of the traits of fantasy literature is the
depiction of “Common Characters and Heroism.” While few find it necessary to state this in
definitions, the reality is that Heroism is usually enacted by male heroes: the overwhelming
88
majority of heroes in all known literature have been men. The stage was set by Homer’s two epic
ancient Greek poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The former focuses on the male hero Achilles,
and the latter on the male hero Odysseus. These poems are thought to date to around the 8th
century BC. Twenty-eight centuries later, the celebrated female writer of fantasy, Ursula le Guin,
was still having difficulty imagining a female hero (as discussed in Chapter 1). Moreover, when
it comes to science fiction the very nature of the genre has been perceived by many to exclude
women altogether, let alone grant them the centre stage as heroes: “Traditionally, sf [science
fiction] has been considered a predominantly masculine field which, through its focus on science
and technology, ‘naturally’ excludes women” (Merrick 2003: 241). This assumed exclusion rests
on the assumption of a gender binary that is ordained by biology: the biological fact of
femaleness is assumed to preclude interest in, or understanding of, science and technology.
Given this, it is scarcely surprising to find that the heroes of science fiction stories have
overwhelmingly been male. When women have appeared as major characters, they have often
been portrayed as nothing but victims of their biology, as for example Rosemary in Ira Levin’s
Rosemary’s Baby (1967): Rosemary is used by male controllers to give birth to the (male) antiChrist, so that she is a victim of both the patriarchy and her own biology.
It is only in recent decades that female heroes have begun to emerge, whether in literature
or in filmic texts. Interestingly in view of the history of science fiction, many of these have
appeared in science fiction filmic texts. As I demonstrated in the previous chapter, female action
heroes in recent filmic texts have expanded the concept of the hero, moving it from its
89
traditional, entirely “masculine” position to a new position which also embraces some
“feminine” traits, notably maternal feeling. In this chapter, I argue that television has expanded
the concept of the hero even further, so that it is in fact possible to speak about a “revisioning” of
the archetypal action hero.
Female action heroes have been on television for a long time, in the form of such
characters as the titular stars of Wonder Woman (1975 – 1979) and Bionic Woman (1976 –
1978), and in the form of the crime-fighting women in Charlie’s Angels (1976 – 1981).
However, I contend that all of these women were clearly intended primarily to be objects for
what Mulvey (1975) would call the male scopophilic gaze, rather than to be positive role models
for ordinary women. Certainly, all of these women seemed to have more “to-be-looked-atness”
than autonomous power. For example, the conventionally attractive women in Charlie’s Angels
wore such revealing clothing that the show came to be referred to as “Jiggle TV” or “T&A TV”
(Tits and Ass Television) (Mittelmeier 2007). Lindsay Wagner as Bionic Woman Jaime
Sommers was similarly easy on the eyes directing the conventional gaze, and was regularly
paired up with Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. Indeed, the Bionic Woman only exists
because of the Six Million Dollar Man’s intervention, as it is his pleading which results in her
being given bionic limbs; moreover, the two are ultimately married. Thus, the Bionic Woman is
in a sense defined by her relationship with a male, just as Charlie’s Angels clearly are defined by
their relationship with Charlie. Tasker (2004) summarizes the situation with regard to both the
secondary status and the “to-be-looked-atness” of the heroines of these 70s series:
90
… the three investigators who are “Charlie’s Angels” were oddly positioned as
both fashion plates and action heroines, but also as in the service of the central
male figure “Charlie.” … [T]hese series often emphasized the glamorous
sexuality of the heroines, an emphasis which sat uneasily with the need to include
action sequences. (19)
While all of these women were conventionally beautiful and even glamorous, it is Wonder
Woman who most clearly illustrates the “to-be-looked-atness” of these 70s heroines.
Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) in the spotlight of the male scopophilic gaze, deflecting bullets while
displaying a classically feminine cleavage, and plenty of thigh above boots that point upwards to her
scarcely concealed groin area. In this picture she deflects bullets with her bracelets.
The bracelets worn by Wonder Woman evoke handcuffs, and the sadomasochistic connotations
of these, as well as of the ropes with which she is constantly pictured, have not been lost on
many factions of the popular imagination. In general, Wonder Woman has been widely
91
perceived primarily as a sex object. See for example the next illustration, which depicts Wonder
Woman’s hot pants from a somewhat different angle.
One regular male viewer from the 1970s candidly describes his own participation in the male
scopophilic gaze:
I tell you any guy that didn’t secretly fantasize about seeing Wonder Woman nude
when they were growing up is a liar! This big breasted super hero was so damn
sexy in her tiny uniform I stayed glued to every episode and movie. The sight of
her big boobs practically spilling out and that hot ass and long legs were the stuff
of dreams! (Sexy Cartoon Porn 2008, my emphasis)
By contrast, Ripley and Sarah Connor are not seen in tiny uniforms that emphasize large
breasts, nor do any parts of their bodies “spill out” for the male scopophilic gaze. Similarly, the
female action heroes of the small screen described in this chapter are notably more modest in
their attire – although some of them, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, had early episodes that
were reminiscent of Wonder Woman and her ilk, as they revealed somewhat more of Sarah
Michelle Geller’s body than was strictly necessary. On the other hand, this mode of dress was
92
appropriate for a teenager trying to make an impression in her new high school; while Wonder
Woman’s attire arguably is only appropriate for a stripper trying to make an impression in a new
night club. Moreover, as pointed out by Thompson (2003), although feminists have found much
to criticize in Buffy’s wardrobe because “[i]n the first two seasons, Buffy fought evil dressed
mostly in flimsy spaghetti tops and short skirts,” nevertheless as the series goes on, her wardrobe
matures with her character. Once she becomes a young woman, she abandons the “girly” dress
for more appropriate attire, and in “The Gift” (the finale of the 5th season, which was originally
intended to be the series finale) she “wears pants and a loose, long sleeved top, giving her greater
maneuverability and a more ‘masculine’ appearance” (Thompson 2003). As so often happens
with real life women, Buffy learns over time that “girly” clothes have limited usefulness, and
adopts more utilitarian garb as she herself attains greater independence and maturity. Xena
Warrior Princess’s attire does not change over time, and is anything but modest; however, she
too cannot be dismissed as merely an object for the male scopophilic gaze, as will be argued
further below.
The tendency for heroines on the small screen to serve primarily as sex objects for the
male scopophilic gaze began to change with Star Trek Voyager, which premiered in 1995 and
featured the first female captain of a starship. The original Gene Rodenberry series Star Trek
(1965 – 1969) featured a swaggeringly macho (though likable withal) hero, Captain James T.
Kirk, played by William Shatner. The series was remarkable for capturing the hippy Zeitgeist,
and daring in featuring a multiracial crew (including the first Asian on prime time TV). But the
93
women, by and large, were 60s sex symbols, and there was not a hero among them. However it is
worth noting that the show won respect for including one of the first black women to appear in a
major role on TV – previously, black women on TV had been cast as servants. Nichelle Nichols
played communications officer Lieutenant Uhura for many years, and was persuaded by Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. to keep playing the role when she wanted to quit, because he believed she
was a vital role model for young black women in the USA (Startrek.com 2006). However, while
Uhura played a key technical role, she was definitely secondary in the development of characters
and relationships; moreover, she had few if any of the heroic masculine traits here under
discussion, and was certainly not an action hero.
It is pertinent to contrast Uhura with a much more recent character: Zoe (played by Gina
Torres) in Joss Whedon’s short-lived but hugely popular (some would say revered) television
show, Firefly (Whedon 2002 – 2003). Like Uhura, Zoe is African-American and conventionally
beautiful. However, she is not a secondary character. She is one of the strongest and most
competent people on the ship, and second-in-command to the captain. She is married to the pilot,
Wash (played by Allan Tudyk), and it is he, rather than his wife, who may be seen as similar to
Uhura – he plays a key technical role, but is definitely secondary in the development of
characters and relationships; moreover, he has few if any of the heroic masculine traits here
under discussion, and is certainly not an action hero. However, his wife most certainly has all of
the heroic masculine traits mentioned in my definition: she claims the right to authority, and
displays strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and often violence). Finally,
94
she is most certainly an action hero, and usually fights side-by-side with the captain against the
bad guys, using fists, guns or whatever comes to hand. She is a formidable fighter (possibly the
most formidable of the entire ensemble), and is frequently referred to as a “warrior.” Thus, with
the passage of almost four decades, the heroic potential of African-American women in science
fiction shows may be said to have been entirely re-envisioned. This would seem to reflect the
wider social reality, in that the year 2008 saw the election of an African-American president of
the United States – an event that would have been well-nigh unimaginable in the year 1966,
when the first episode of the original Star Trek series aired.
Star Trek premiered in 1966, and for almost three decades, the starships of the Federation
were captained by heroic, hyper-rational men, who steadfastly put the needs of the many ahead
of the needs of the few (although Captain Kirk did have a few shaky moments, particularly when
attractive young women were in the picture).
95
This regard for the greater good may be seen as a key feature of the action hero, and is shared by
all of the female action heroes discussed in the previous chapter. But in 1995, the first female
captain of a Federation starship strode boldly onto the bridge, in the debut of the fourth Star Trek
series, Voyager. Kate Mulgrew shines as Captain Kathryn Janeway, an aquiline-jawed, deepvoiced, calm and utterly confident leader. Indeed, I argue that she is the first true female action
hero of the small screen. As is required of action heroes, she unfailingly demonstrates respect for
the greater good, placing the needs of the many above the needs of the few.
When Janeway first appears in the series premier of Voyager, “Caretaker,” she is
standing on the bridge of her starship with her legs spread and her hands on her hips. The camera
angles up to her, giving the impression that she is large and tall (although in fact she is neither).
She is recruiting people for an important mission, with all the confidence of any male hero.
“Don’t call me sir!” A new Captain on the Bridge:
Kate Mulgrew takes control as Captain Kathryn
Janeway. Despite the appointment of Janeway, even
the Federation clings to archaic ways: for example,
the protocol is for captains to be called “Sir.”
Janeway deals with this problem in her
characteristic, head-on way during her first days on
the bridge, informing Ensign Harry Kim that she
does not like to be called “Sir,” that “Ma’am” is
acceptable in a crunch, but that she’d prefer
“Captain.” The bemused young man replies, “Yes
Ma’am” – to which Janeway curtly replies, “It’s not
crunch time yet, Mr. Kim. I’ll let you know when.”
96
The appearance of Captain Kathryn Janeway on the deck of the U.S.S. Voyager was an
extraordinary event in media history. As Inness (1999) points out:
For many years, the producers of the Star Trek shows refused to cast a woman for
the captain’s position out of fear that their largely male audience would not be
able to relate to a woman …. When Janeway was finally introduced as a captain, a
heated battle raged about how her gender would influence her ability to be a
leader. (Inness 1999: 103)
As Jeff Taylor, co-creator of Voyager, comments:
The most pressing concern about a female captain, of course, is will people buy
that she’s a captain? Will they accept that a whole crew would follow her, report
to her, trust her in battle? This is the most important selling point in a woman.
Kate Mulgrew has that without even working at it. As a person, as a human being,
she is everything that we envisioned Janeway being. She has power coming out of
her genetic code, and the moment that she walked out on that bridge the first day,
she owned it. (Quoted on the back cover of the Columbia House video of the
series premiere of Voyager)
Despite her impressive personal talents, the fact that Mulgrew was cast as Captain Janeway
certainly shows that the creators of television shows had taken a quantum leap forward, and were
finally able to envisage women as action heroes and leaders, even in the science fiction genre.
This is extremely significant, especially given that women had at one time been perceived as
precluded from science fiction altogether by biology (as discussed at the beginning of this
chapter). Television producers must have been influenced by social realities around them: this
was 1995, and Ripley and Sarah Connor had already enjoyed spectacular success on the big
screen. Moreover, by 1995 most women in our society had emerged from the kitchen and entered
the public sphere; many had even made it to the board room. As McCaughey and King (2001)
97
comment, we live in a world in which middle-class white women comprise an important part of
the paid labour force, so that Barbara Ehrenreich has referred to the “decline of patriarchy.” In
this postmodern world, many women have become economically independent of men, and most
men have given up the charade of providing for and protecting women: “In this new world,
women move away from the moral (and nonviolent) purity of the Victorian `Cult of True
Womanhood’ and onto men’s turf …. Such a culture puts violent women (as heroes or villains)
in its movies” (McCaughey and King 2001: 5).
Perhaps equally important from the point of view of television producers was the fact that
just as many women as men watched television; this, coupled with their increasing economic
prosperity rendered them an important aspect of viewership demographics (as the point of most
television is to sell products by attracting viewers, who are then captive audiences for the adverts
which punctuate shows). The issue of demographics is explored more fully below.
Star Trek enjoys a massive viewership comprising both female and male viewers of all
ages – and all seemed entirely capable of accepting a female captain, judging by the fact that the
show ran for six years (1995 to 2001). Moreover, not only was her gender different from
preceding heroes; she also was a different kind of hero. Indeed, Janeway illustrates my point that
female masculinity and female heroism do not demand the large muscles that the archetypal male
hero (as epitomized by Schwarzenegger and Stallone) must have. All of the qualities I propose in
my definition of female masculinity are relevant to Janeway’s behaviour:
98
… female masculinity … consists in female-bodied persons engaging in ways of
thought and behaviour that have traditionally been considered masculine, such as
claiming the right to authority, or displaying strength, courage, assertiveness,
leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence), and very often heroism.
This is precisely what Janeway epitomizes. Her attitude, her thinking and her behaviour mark her
as “masculine.” Unlike the impressively towering Lieutenant Ripley, Captain Janeway is a short
woman. She is seldom seen with a weapon, and appears to pose no physical threat to anyone. In
this, she is entirely unlike all male action heroes. Yet she utterly claims the right to authority
from the very first moment that she strides onto the deck – without having to knock people
around to do so. As noted by Inness: “Unlike Ripley, Janeway, despite being physically fit,
almost never lugs around big guns or flexes her pecs in a t-shirt. Yet, Janeway is still very much
a leader, and a tough one” (1999: 103). I argue that Janeway expands the notion of action hero in
a way that is crucially important for all women, for she shows that it is unnecessary to compete
on a physical level with men in order to be a hero or a leader. Mental and moral strength suffice
– and Janeway has these in abundance. Indeed, the foundation for such a hero was laid with
previous Star Trek series, notably Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Patrick Stewart as
Captain Picard is physically underwhelming, yet morally and intellectually compelling, so that
his right to authority and unquestioned leadership is established by his brain, not his brawn.
Voyager was important in that it took the logical next step in depicting such a hero as a woman.
Two years after Janeway took command of the U.S.S. Voyager, television history was
made again – this time when a blonde cheerleader arrived to take back the night for women
99
everywhere. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the most successful television series ever
made, and unlike many other science fiction shows, was welcomed as much by females as by
males. Even Ms. magazine proclaimed: “Many feminists have been dreaming of mass-culture
moments like this since feminism came into being … [and] [n]o woman television character has
exhibited the confidence and strength of the male heroes of archetype and fantasy … until now”
(Magoulick 2006: 730). It seems that women were more than ready to see women heroes on
television, and television producers were ready to cater to this need. As noted above, a culture in
which tough women appear in real life will also put tough women onto its television screens.
However, the interesting thing about doing so is that once women action heroes enter the realm
of science fiction and fantasy, they open up new vistas of possibility for the young women who
view them. As will be discussed further below, the titular hero of Buffy the Vampire Slayer role
models aspects of heroism that can be appropriated by all women, not just super heroes.
The first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer set the tone for the entire series,
immediately announcing that this would be a long-overdue twist on the lengthy succession of
science fiction tales which had relegated women to screaming, helpless victims in the corner. In
the opening scene the viewer sees a dark, deserted school. The camera is inside the building.
Suddenly, the silence is broken by the sound of smashing glass, as a window is broken by a
young man. A young blonde woman with him anxiously asks, “Are you sure this is a good
idea?” He tells her firmly: “It’s a great idea – now come on.” The two climb in through the
window. They are now in the empty corridors of Sunnydale High. The young man wants them to
100
go onto the roof of the gym, but the woman is reluctant. The man says lasciviously, “Oh, you
can’t wait, huh?” and attempts to kiss her. However, she pulls away, apparently frightened by a
noise. Reluctantly, the young man humours her, and checks to see that no one else is around.
Then he turns to her and says, “There’s nobody here.” She asks nervously, still peering into the
dark, “Are you sure?” and he replies: “Yes, I’m sure.” She says, “OK,” and then swings back
towards him suddenly, her face transforming into that of a vampire, as she emits a low but feral
growl and sinks her teeth into his neck. He collapses, crying out in pain. The scene then fades to
the opening credits, with the shocked viewer well aware that it is not only vampires that will be
skewered in this show – gender norms also will be skewered. A young woman has “taken
advantage” of a young man, rather than the other way around. Moreover, the viewer’s fear for
the safety of the young woman turns out to be entirely unwarranted – in this show, women are
more likely to be aggressors than victims. In addition, the scene upsets tradition in that vampires
are traditionally male fictional characters preying on female victims, not females preying on
male victims. The clearly trumpeted message that night is no longer a time when women are in
constant danger from male aggressors is reinforced later in the same episode, when a strange
man follows a vulnerable-looking young schoolgirl, Buffy Summers, through dark alleyways.
Instead of becoming frightened, she lies in wait for him (by doing a handstand on a pole above
head height), and then floors him with a powerful two-footed kick, before demanding to know
why he is following her. In this show, women take back the night with a vengeance.
101
True to the promise of this first show, all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
depict a female action hero who not only does not have to wait to be rescued, but who repeatedly
saves both her friends and the world from all manner of hideous enemies – vampires,
miscellaneous demons, and even a giant, shape-shifting female praying mantis (the lastmentioned in one of the less stellar moments of the show). Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, is a
third-generation feminist, as his mother and his grandmother were both active feminists.
Following in their footsteps, he succeeds in creating a female action hero who fights back
aggressively, instead of running away screaming. Buffy transgresses the gender binary, smashing
the stereotype of the helpless female victim, and showing that women can be heroes too. This
was precisely Whedon’s intention: as noted in my Introduction, Whedon states: “I saw so many
horror movies where there was that blonde girl who would always get herself killed. … I thought
it was time she had a chance to take back the night” (Kuzui and Whedon 1992). However, Buffy
is initially a reluctant hero, even though it is her destiny to be a vampire slayer, because as the
opening credits of every episode tell us:
Into every generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a Chosen One.
One born with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, to stop the spread of
their evil and the swell of their numbers.
The notion that it is Buffy’s destiny to save the world from evil is particularly interesting
in view of the biological determinism underlying assertions such as Freud’s that “anatomy is
destiny.” In this, Freud arguably was merely making explicit that which is believed implicitly by
all who subscribe to the gender binary, that is, that one’s gender determines one’s primary
102
personality traits. In response to Freud’s pronouncements, Karen Horney suggests that culture
rather than biology is the primary determinant of personality, and that it is our culture, not our
biology, that prescribes that women should be in an inferior position to men. She argues that if
women feel inferior to men, it is not due to penis envy, but rather is a pragmatic response to
social realities. As she puts it: “[t]he wish to be a man ... may be the expression of a wish for all
those qualities or privileges which in our culture are regarded as masculine, such as strength,
courage, independence, success, sexual freedom, right to choose a partner” (1939: 108). It is
notable that the first four “masculine” qualities that Horney lists (strength, courage,
independence, success) are all associated with male heroes, and that the first two are part of my
suggested definition of masculinity. The third, “independence,” may be equated with the quality
of assertiveness, which is also part of my suggested definition of masculinity. In short, Freud
asserts that biology ordains personality, and implies that biology effectively precludes women
from heroism. However, Horney makes the point that it is culture rather than biology which
precludes women from attributes associated with masculinity (and hence precludes them from
heroism, as all of the heroic traits are also assumed to be masculine traits). Buffy the Vampire
Slayer moves Horney’s rebuttal into the popular realm. Indeed, it turns Freud’s assertion entirely
on its head, suggesting that not only does female anatomy not imply a destiny of inferiority, but
that female anatomy may go hand in hand with a destiny of heroism and greatness: a destiny to
save the world!
103
In the series premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy resists this destiny. She has
already been a slayer for a year, in Los Angeles, and the result was that she had to burn down the
school gym in order to vanquish vampires – an act that resulted in her expulsion from school, as
only Buffy knew the real reason for her act of arson. She and her mother have moved to
Sunnydale as it is the only place that will accept a girl with a permanent school record such as
Buffy’s. 1 Buffy now hopes for a quiet life, as does her mother. Unfortunately for both of them,
Sunnydale is situated on a hell mouth, and their arrival in the town is not coincidental; rather, it
is her destiny. Thus she is expected, and a Watcher (Rupert Giles, played with understated style
by British actor Anthony Stewart Head) awaits her, to guide her in fulfilling her destiny. Buffy
resists, aspiring to be an ordinary teenager and a cheerleader, rather than a vampire slayer.
However, she is drawn back to her heroic destiny by the imminent danger posed to her new
friend, Willow Rosenberg (played by Alyson Hannigan). Buffy notices a vampire escorting
Willow out of the Bronze, a nightclub, and sets off in hot pursuit to save her. Soon two of her
other new friends, Xander Harris (played by Nicholas Brendon) and Jesse (who dies so quickly
that it is scarcely worth noting who played him), are also in danger, and Buffy is in the thick of
mortal vampire combat. From that point, she stops resisting her destiny.
1
The viewer later realizes that the school has lost so many students to vampires that it can scarcely afford to be
selective about new students.
104
The point here is that Buffy becomes an action hero partly because it is her destiny, and
partly out of concern for her friends. Thus, she is not the archetypal lone, macho hero on a
public-focused mission to save the world. While she is indeed on a mission to save the world, her
motivations lie both in the public and the private spheres. Buffy wants to save the world, but on a
day-to-day level, she cares about her friends and wants to save them. This is important, for it is
precisely in regard to how she relates to her friends that Buffy expands, and indeed revisions, the
traditional hero archetype. As Ross (2004) succinctly summarizes it, both Buffy and Xena:
Warrior Princess:
… stress that a woman can be “tough enough” to fight patriarchy when she learns
to listen to other women’s perspectives on the world and when she values her
emotional bonds with other females as a source of strength. … [As a result, both
women] push the limits of what it means to be a hero. (231, my emphasis)
Ross (2004) points out that both Buffy and Xena talk with their woman friends in order “to
understand how their experiences are rooted in patriarchy, so that they may take action to
improve their lives as women” (232). Moreover, this applies to both the titular heroes and their
women friends. Thus, in stark contrast to the archetypal isolated male action hero, these women
construct their heroism within a community, and are not so much heroes for other people as
heroes with them: “The lead characters must be strong enough psychologically and emotionally
to change their approaches to being heroic; they learn that the toughest hero is a flexible one
who relies on others” (Ross 2004: 233, my emphasis).
105
It is also noteworthy that Buffy values her friendships with both women and men. She
immediately becomes friends with school nerds Willow and Xander, and remains firm friends
with both of them throughout the series (with a notable interruption when Willow temporarily
becomes evil). In the course of this, she subverts the heroic archetype not only by gaining power
from her friends, but also by sharing power with them. Xander is empowered to work through
his nerd status and find his own relatively modest version of heroism. This situation of a woman
teaching a man how to become a new action hero is reminiscent of Terminator 2, in which Sarah
Connor teaches her son John how to be a hero. Similarly, Willow’s relationship with Buffy
empowers Willow to grow from a bullied computer nerd into a strong, confident (lesbian)
woman. She also attains great power as a witch, and at the end of the series plays an essential
part in saving the world with her magical powers, thus becoming a female action hero in her own
right. This sharing of power between women is reminiscent of Xena, where the petite, blonde,
and seemingly helpless Gabrielle saves the powerful Xena’s life in the very first episode, using
her powers of communication and persuasion to rescue her from angry villagers. Again and
again, women action heroes show that the traditionally masculine strengths do not suffice on
their own: true heroism demands the addition of traditionally feminine strengths.
Read in this way, the series finale of Buffy is a triumphant sharing of Buffy’s power with
the entire world, in which the concept of action hero is entirely revisioned. Here one must bear in
mind the archetype of the action hero as lone wolf, alienated from the world as he pursues his
destiny as a hero. A clear example is Superman, unable ever to marry or even to have close
106
friends because his identity must always be kept a secret. Similarly Batman – apart from his odd
and somewhat campy liaison with Robin – lives alone, a man apart, his identity hidden behind a
bizarre mask, moving in the shadows as he carries out his heroic feats. In the world of filmic
action heroes, one need only think of Rambo, a Vietnam veteran with psychological damage,
roving alone through the world as he shoots some things and blows other things up.
It is against this context that the sharing and caring exhibited by both Xena and Buffy
must be appreciated as a true re-visioning of the action hero archetype. Just as Buffy has her two
faithful friends, Xena has her faithful sidekick Gabrielle, who joins her in the very first episode
and seldom leaves her side. This is despite the fact that Xena tries very hard at first to shake off
Gabrielle, and seems to acquiesce almost reluctantly to the friendship. For example, at the end of
Episode 1, “Sins of the Past,” Gabrielle arrives at Xena’s campfire, having followed her secretly.
This dialogue ensues:
Xena:
You know I’m sending you home in the morning.
Gabrielle:
I won’t stay home. I don’t belong there, Xena. I’m not the little girl
that my parents wanted me to be. You would understand.
Xena:
It’s not easy proving you’re a different person. (Reluctantly flings
a bed roll at her.) You can sleep over there.
They smile at each other.
Next morning, as the two walk off into the distance:
Xena:
You know where I’m headed, there’ll be trouble.
107
Gabrielle:
I know.
Xena:
Then why would you want to go into that?
Gabrielle:
That’s what friends do – they stand by each other when there’s
trouble.
Xena:
All right ... friend.
(End of episode 1)
True to the promise of this conclusion to the first episode, over the course of the ensuing
episodes Gabrielle teaches Xena the value of friendship, caring and sharing. It should also be
noted that scenes such as the one above are typical of the many scenes in the series that were
characterized by clear homosociality and even homoeroticism between Xena and Gabrielle,
which led to the show attracting a large contingent of devoted queer viewers. Evidence of the
show’s social impact appeared in the form of bumper stickers which echoed religious bumper
stickers which query “What would Jesus do?” with a much more aggressive question: “What
would Xena do?”
Gabrielle and Xena –
best friends for life
108
Thus both Buffy and Xena reflect the archetype of the “sisterhood of women”, which allows
women to bond together to resist patriarchy. Buffy and Xena bond with other women to resist
patriarchy on a symbolic level, as they re-fashion their identities from victims to heroes.
This development in the psyche of the action hero towards an approach that emphasizes
caring, sharing and working together, and in the process empowering all concerned, is taken
much further in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In her relationships with her friends, Buffy is
repeatedly shown to be flexible in how she approaches the challenges of living on a hell mouth.
While Buffy grows increasingly confident as a leader, she never loses touch with the need to
listen to the input of friends in formulating her plans. As Willow says in the second episode,
“We’re a team.” Thus, Buffy may be seen as becoming, in the Deleuzian sense, a new kind of
hero, one who eschews the lone wolf archetype and who instead is enriched by (and in turn
enriches) her friends. I argue that this amounts to incorporating the traditionally feminine talent
for communication into the archetype of the hero, thereby expanding the archetype in an original
and useful way, and making it all the richer. This is an important part of the revisioning of the
action hero, which, I contend, has been achieved by recent filmic female action heroes. One of
the essential traits of fantasy listed at the beginning of this chapter is “the tracing of a Quest”
(Timmerman 1983: 4). Like male action heroes before them, both Xena and Buffy are on a Quest
to protect the innocent from evil. (This pertains to the Struggle between Good and Evil, which,
according to Timmerman, is also an essential trait of fantasy.) However, in pursuing this Quest,
they also expand the ways in which such a Quest may be traced: they show that this Quest may
109
be a shared Quest, and that in sharing Heroism (another essential trait of fantasy), heroes grow
stronger still – while at the same time the “Common Characters” with whom they share the story
also grow stronger (Timmerman 1983).
In this regard, it is necessary to rebut a potential protest, namely, that Buffy is controlled
by a male Watcher, and thus is in fact merely a victim of patriarchy, rather than an autonomous,
assertive action hero. This protest can be dispelled by careful watching of the show. Even in the
first season, when Buffy is very young and still coming to her true power, she listens to Giles
only when it suits her. For example, when she plans to try out for cheerleading, Giles is appalled,
describing it as a cult, which will distract her from her sacred duty. The following interchange
ensues:
Giles: As your Watcher, I forbid it.
Buffy: And you’ll be stopping me – how?
In this, Buffy alludes to her super powers, which essentially mean that she has the ability to
choose exactly what she wants at all times. Notably, Buffy’s ability to choose is in keeping with
traditional liberal feminism, which aimed at instilling choice for women. Throughout the series,
Buffy maintains this freedom to choose, and is anything but in thrall to Giles. In fact, after Giles
is replaced by another male Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (played by Alexis Denisof), she
refuses to accept any semblance of Watcher authority, and breaks with centuries of tradition by
becoming an independent slayer. Earlier in the series, when a group of authorities from the
Watcher’s Council come to Sunnydale to test her, she entirely repudiates their authority over her,
110
which is also a radical break with convention. This group is led by an older white man, making it
clear that the Watcher’s Council symbolizes the patriarchal authority to which Buffy never
submits.
Indeed, Buffy never fully submits to external power, meaning that she remains an
authentically independent hero. The same may be said of Xena, and it is this unwavering
independence which renders Xena’s somewhat revealing costumes comparatively insignificant.
Moreover, Xena demonstrates throughout the series uncompromising resistance to all male
attempts to treat her as a sexual object, projecting the message that she dresses as she does for
her own convenience, not to turn herself into an object to be looked at or desired.
While Buffy has freedom to choose, an increasingly mature sense of responsibility causes
her more often to choose duty over fun as the series progresses. For example, when she goes on a
date with a boy, rather than accompanying Giles to a funeral home, Giles is almost killed by
vampires. He does not hold her accountable for this – but she holds herself accountable. In this
development, Buffy is, in my opinion, a good role model for all young girls (not just future
action heroes), because she is able to accept the responsibility that her powers entail. Of course,
in Buffy’s case her powers are great, and therefore her responsibility is great. This is in fact a
recurring motif with male super heroes. For example, arguably the most pivotal line in the entire
Spiderman film of 2002 occurs when Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben says to him: “Remember, with
great power comes great responsibility” (Raimi 2002). The assumption of this great
111
responsibility usually marks the beginning of the hero’s quest, as he sets off to battle evil in some
form or another. With male action heroes, it is customary for this assumption of responsibility to
follow the death of a father figure. Examples include Peter Parker and Uncle Ben (Peter only
assumes the vigilante mantle of Spiderman after Uncle Ben dies at the hands of a criminal);
Superman and his adoptive father Jonathan Kent (the young superman does not leave to become
a protector of the innocent in the big city of Metropolis until after the older Kent dies of a heart
attack); Bruce Wayne and his father (Wayne begins training to be the vigilante Batman, on a
quest to rid Gotham City of crime, after witnessing the murder of his parents by a petty thief);
Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (the young Skywalker cannot rise to his full power until he has
killed his evil father); and so on. Unsurprisingly, this assumption of the patriarch’s power,
following his death, is not part of the path of female action heroes. However, the assumption of
responsibility most certainly is.
While most women do not have great power, the relaxation of patriarchy in our society
means that they do have far more power than ever before – and consequently even more
responsibility to use that power wisely. In the heroic tradition, responsibility most commonly has
to do with a quest to protect the innocent from the malevolent. Traditionally this has always been
the responsibility of male heroes. However, Buffy is a female character who exemplifies the
heroic tradition of accepting this duty, and rising to it. Crucially, in so doing she follows in the
footsteps of her filmic forebears (Ripley and Sarah Connor), making the “tough decision” to put
the needs of the many (the world) ahead of the needs of the few (the domestic unit comprising
112
herself and her mother). In so doing, she negates the supposed biological constraints which have
barred women from heroism by keeping them narrowly focused on the welfare of their family
units rather than on the “bigger picture.” This is crucial because being able to act for the sake of
the big picture rather than narrow domestic concerns has always been a quintessential heroic
quality – Odysseus was certainly not focused on Penelope’s needs when he set out to teach the
Trojans a lesson.
While Buffy breaks with the heroic tradition in the sense that she works within a team,
she is nevertheless every inch both a masculine woman and an action hero. Certainly, she
epitomizes the qualities I specify in my definition of female masculinity, by engaging in ways of
thought and behaviour that have traditionally been considered masculine, such as claiming the
right to authority, and displaying strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and
sometimes violence), and very often heroism. Physicality and violence are part of Buffy’s daily
repertoire. In the first episode, when she drops her school bag, a pointed stick (for killing
vampires) spills out along with her school books. However, like Janeway, Buffy is constantly
motivated by her concern for the greater good, especially as she matures into a young woman.
Female action heroes (like male action heroes, but unlike traditional depictions of women which,
as noted in Chapter 3, depict women as constrained by their biology to the domestic sphere) have
an eye to the greater good, and make their decisions accordingly. Buffy takes this to its
113
penultimate lengths when she kills her beloved Angel, 2 because he has reverted to his evil former
self, Angelus, and now poses a serious threat to the people she loves, and to the world in general.
And she takes it to its ultimate lengths when she gives her life to save her sister and the world, at
the end of Season Five. 3 This of course is similar to Ripley’s self-sacrifice at the end of the third
Alien film, Alien 3, when Ripley hurls herself into boiling lead to destroy the monster incubating
inside her body.
While Buffy thus fits comfortably into the traditional heroic archetype, I argue that she is
much more than just another stereotypical hero. On the contrary, over the course of the seven
seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy evolves from a frightened, hesitant, reluctant slayer
into an entirely new kind of hero: as noted above, she works within a community or team, and
grows stronger through communicating with others, while at the same time empowering others.
Indeed, I argue that Buffy has done more to transform the hero archetype than any of the other
filmic female action heroes. This is all the more true because she has also created a face for
female masculinity that transgresses the gender binary all the more effectively for being so
recognizably feminine (in the traditional sense). As one young woman muses on her blog:
2
Angel is her boyfriend, a centuries-old vampire who has been “cursed” with a soul, and who now roams the earth
eternally, attempting to atone for the misdeeds he committed when he had no soul, by fighting his own kind –
vampires.
3
This was supposed to be the end of the show, but Buffy’s death evoked such a collective howl of outrage and
disappointment from her largely North American fans that the producers capitulated and resurrected both Buffy and
the show for a further two seasons. This turned out to be salutary, as Season 6 takes the show to its darkest depths
when Buffy flirts with BDSM with Spike, a vampire, while Season 7 saw the show soar to new heights in terms of
revisioning the heroic archetype, as is discussed further below.
114
Why does femininity have to be seen as being in opposition to feminism? There is
a certain extent to which women choose to and enjoy presenting themselves as
attractive to men, just as men often choose to and enjoy presenting themselves as
desirable to women. …. To berate female heroes … for wearing makeup or
dressing in a sexually attractive manner is in fact to masculinise them – to say
they can only be a hero if they do not present themselves as feminine. And again,
male heroes (compare Hercules and Angel, as the direct counterparts of Xena and
Buffy) are also presented in a conventionally attractive, sexualised manner in
terms of their “makeup” and attire, but they are not considered to be
problematising their heroic nature in so doing. (Two Sides to Nowhere 30 May,
2007)
This is precisely my point. I argue that women need to be free to act in a “masculine” way while
at the same time wearing whatever they choose to wear – and if that happens to be lipstick and a
cheerleader’s outfit, then so be it. On the other hand, women also need to be free to present
themselves in any way they see fit, and still be perceived as legitimate heroes. For example, a
female hero who chooses to perform a masculine gender role should be considered no less a
hero. Unfortunately, such female heroes have not yet appeared in popular culture. The fact that
they have not reflects Halberstam’s point that there is a cultural imperative “to reduce sexuality
to binary systems of gender difference” (Halberstam 1998: 76). Regardless of Butler’s 1990 call
to stir up “gender trouble,” all female heroes to date have stayed quite close to the “correct” side
of the prevalent binary system of gender difference. However, it is possible to perceive the
androgyny achieved by the likes of Ripley in Alien 3 as a step in the direction of dismantling this
binary system of gender difference.
Whether the current heterosexist patriarchy will ever allow an entirely masculinepresenting woman to be the hero of a large budget Hollywood film remains to be seen. It seems
115
unlikely, but hope may be found in the sympathetic reception of Brandon Teena (played with
Oscar-winning aplomb by Hilary Swank) in the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry about a real life
female-to-male transsexual (Peirce 1999). Granted that Teena was far more a victim than a hero,
it is nevertheless true that he was heroic in daring to subvert the dictates of the gender binary in
the rural mid-west of the United States of America. On the other hand, Aliens includes a butch
female character named Private Jenette Vasquez (played by Jeanette Goldstein), a Latino soldier
with impressive musculature and a decidedly masculine presentation. When she first appears on
camera she is doing pull-ups, an exercise that is strongly male-identified as it requires great
upper body strength, and is not possible for most women (just as the female hero of GI Jane
signals her masculine toughness by doing one-handed push-ups, and just as Sarah Connor signals
that she is ready to be a warrior hero when she does pull-ups at the beginning of Terminator 2).
A male soldier asks her: “Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?” Scarcely
missing a beat in her pull-ups, Vasquez shoots back: “No, have you?” Vasquez is very brave and
a good soldier, and her appearance in this film might have signalled acceptance of women heroes
actually presenting themselves as physically masculine – if not for the fact that she is the first in
the cast to die a horrible death.
Similarly, while Hollywood has featured a number of women presenting as masculine in
one way or another, none of these performances can be seen as positive representations of female
masculinity, for varying reasons. For example, Beryl Reid as George in Robert Aldrich’s The
Killing of Sister George (1968) is butch, but she is an unattractive, sadistic monster of a woman;
116
Robin Johnson as Nicky in Alan Moylan’s Times Square (1980) is an attractive, young butch,
but she is also a juvenile delinquent; Gina Gershon in Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Bound
(1996) is an attractive butch, but she is also a petty thief; and Queen Latifah as Cleo Sims in F.
Gary Gray’s Set it Off (1996) is also an attractive butch – but she is a major criminal who
ultimately is killed (Halberstam 1998). Even Danny De Vito’s children’s film Matilda (1996)
features a school principal, Miss Trunchbull, who resembles the stereotype of the sporty, butch
gym teacher – but who is a cruel, sadistic, child abuser. (In this, the film closely follows Roald
Dahl’s 1988 book of the same name.) Thus, Hollywood seems to be unable to accommodate
masculine-appearing women except by demonizing them.
Arguably, this demonization reflects the still prevalent societal condemnation of
masculine-presenting women (GI Jane notwithstanding). However, I argue that female
masculinity has nevertheless made its way into recent popular filmic texts, because masculinity
can be performed with or without an accompanying masculine physical presentation. In this I
refer to masculinity in the sense that I define it, that is engaging in ways of thought and
behaviour that have traditionally been considered masculine, such as claiming the right to
authority, or displaying strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and sometimes
violence), and very often heroism. There is no dress code for women who wish to perform
masculinity defined in this way. This has the potential to be extremely liberatory, for, as I stated
in Chapter One, it opens the door for women who prefer to conform physically to social mores to
117
lay claim nevertheless to the authoritativeness and power that has traditionally been the domain
of men.
Buffy has thus made it possible to envisage female masculinity in a short, red and white
cheerleader’s dress. Moreover, in the course of becoming, again and again, the hero who saves
her friends and the world, she evolves into an entirely new kind of hero which, I argue, revisions
the traditional hero archetype into a new kind of hero, suitable for modern times when received
gender norms are under rigorous scrutiny. In this process, she again and again chooses to
perform those aspects of masculine or feminine gender that work best for specific circumstances.
In so doing, she creates a heroic archetype that incorporates what are, arguably, the best of both
traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine traits. In particular, she broadens the heroic
archetype into one that can draw from the traditionally female traits of sharing, empathetic
caring, and a talent for communication, so that all of the people around the hero are both
empowered and enriched. The new action hero, as epitomized by Buffy, is able seamlessly to
integrate “masculine” traits such as strength, action and heroism with “feminine” traits such as
caring and sharing, resulting in triumphant, shared accomplishment by all. While Buffy began
with one lone girl saving the world, the series ends with the message that all good people may
pool their respective talents to save the world. Moreover, Buffy is utterly selfless in this sharing
of power. This may be illustrated with reference to the series finale.
118
In the final episode of the series, entitled “Chosen,” Buffy and a large, somewhat motley
collection of her allies prepare for a final stand against the greatest danger that has ever faced the
earth: an evil power referred to as “The First,” which is backed by an army of super vampires
referred to as turok han. Against this formidable force is pitted a group comprising the following:

Spike, formerly an evil vampire, a wiry Englishman with platinum hair, who fell in love with
Buffy and went off in a successful search for a soul, and who now stands shoulder to
shoulder with his erstwhile enemies against the powers of darkness.

Principal Wood, the school principal, a tall, handsome African American whose vampire
slayer mother was killed by Spike.

Angel, a traditionally dark and brooding vampire with an untraditional soul, Buffy’s true
love, although the two remain ever star-crossed. He has returned to Sunnydale to help with
this final effort, and Buffy asks him “What are you doing here?” to which he responds,
“Well, not rescuing a damsel in distress, that’s for sure.” She replies, as she picks up a
massive ax, “You know me, not much for the `damseling’.”

Willow, Buffy’s Jewish, lesbian best friend, who has proven to be a powerful witch, but who
now reserves her power only for special occasions – such as saving the world.

Xander, now with only one eye due to a clash with the evil force, but still gamely doing his
only-human best to help his two very powerful female friends.
119

Anya, a centuries-old former revenge demon who has renounced her immortality, power and
revenge itself, out of love for Xander, and who has been painfully (but with a charming
enthusiasm) learning the lesson of how to be human.

Giles, Buffy’s former Watcher, a middle-aged Englishman, who has returned from London to
help save the world.

Dawn, Buffy’s little sister (who was created by magic, rather than by more traditional
means). Like Xander, Dawn has no special powers, apart from the courage and confidence
that she has acquired from working with her sister and friends in the fight against evil.

A crew of about thirty Slayer “stand-bys” – young women of assorted races and backgrounds
who could theoretically become slayers, if the incumbent slayer should herself be slain.
According to the mythology of the show, only one girl at a time can be a slayer. When the
incumbent slayer dies (usually horribly, due to the nature of the job), the next in line acquires
the superhero powers, which have, until that time, lain dormant within her. All of these
young women have been “chosen” as possible successors in the vampire slayer line. Usually,
they would be unaware of their possible destiny, but Buffy has assembled them in the hope
that they can somehow help to defeat the First – even though they do not have superpowers,
as she does.

Faith, a slayer who gained her powers when Buffy died for a short while, and who was
corrupted by power for a time, but who has now come back from the dark side. Faith is one
of the few working-class characters in a primarily middle-class show. Accordingly, her
120
descent to the dark side has been the subject of some scathing commentary by critics who
accuse Buffy of reflecting elitist class values. However, Faith entirely redeems herself in the
final season, thus arguably rebutting such criticism.

Andrew, an archetypal “nerd” who has reformed his former ways (when he aspired to be a
super criminal), and who now throws in his lightweight lot with Buffy’s crew.
I list all of these assorted characters because Ross (2004) has argued that in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, Buffy and Willow’s strength derives from female friendship and solidarity, in
that the two women communicate with each other and work together to empower each other and
resist patriarchal attempts to separate them from each other. I would agree that female solidarity
is enormously important and empowering in the show, and in itself constitutes a revisioning of
heroism. However, I argue that Buffy goes beyond this: throughout the show, and particularly in
this final episode, we see a coming together of all kinds of people, not just two women. There is
a pooling of both female and male strength, which is appropriate for a show whose hero
incorporates both “masculine” and “feminine” strengths.
In this final episode, all of the above characters are in varying stages of despair, as all
fear they lack the collective power to defeat the evil force. Therefore, they all expect imminent
and horrible death, followed in quick succession by a horrible death for all other human beings.
In this darkest hour, Buffy calls them together and addresses them all:
121
Right now you’re asking yourself what makes this different. What makes us
anything more than a bunch of girls being picked off one by one? It’s true – none
of you have the power that Faith and I do. So here’s the part where you make a
choice. What if you could have that power? Now? In every generation one slayer
is born because a bunch of men who died thousands of years ago made up that
rule. They were powerful men. This woman [pointing to Willow] is more
powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rule. I say my power
should be our power. Tomorrow, Willow will use the essence of the scythe to
change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer,
will be a Slayer. Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Can
stand up, will stand up. Slayers, every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready
to be strong?
Buffy then outlines her plan: Willow will muster all of her massive powers as a witch to
confer their superpowers on the potential superheroes now, rather than only after the death of the
preceding slayer. Willow confides in her woman lover (one of the potential slayers) that she is
afraid that she will not be up to the challenge, and the young woman reminds her: “Buffy
believes in you.” This reflects one of the most powerful dynamics of the show, a dynamic that
begins in the very first episode and continues to the very end: that of Buffy’s support and faith in
her friend enabling Willow to become a hero in her own right. Thus, an important part of this
revisioning of the hero archetype is that heroes make heroes of their friends, too. This is entirely
different from the traditional heroic archetype, in which the hero is almost by definition alone
and exclusive, the lone male hero whose heroism is highlighted by its very contrast with the
comparative weakness of his peers. James Bond is remarkable because other secret agents cannot
achieve what he can achieve; Superman is remarkable because he has powers which ordinary
men do not have; the heroes of cowboy epics are remarkable and formidable because they shoot
straighter, ride faster and hit harder than their peers. None of these heroes has the slightest desire
122
to share his powers with other people, or to empower them in any way; there are no scenes in
which these heroes try to teach their skills to other people. In the case of Buffy, the message is
that even nerdy girls who are picked on by their peers can come into their own power and
become heroes – it is not just freakish, exceptional women who may be heroes. Moreover, they
can find this power due to the support of their female friends who believe in them. This is a
powerfully revisionist dynamic, and seems to be a culmination of what Le Guin set out to do
when she attempted to “revision vision” by imagining what a female hero in a fantasy tale might
be (Le Guin 1993: 12). To recall my Introduction, Le Guin argued that “thanks to the revisioning
of gender called feminism, we can see the myth [of male heroes] as a myth: a construct, which
may be changed; an idea which may be rethought, made more true, more honest” (Le Guin 1993:
17). In envisioning heroes who are not only female but who empower other women to be heroes,
and by extension implying that all women have the potential for the very heroism from which
they were thought to be precluded by their biological destiny as women, Buffy takes the process
which Le Guin began to its logical and liberatory conclusion.
There are of course two allied forces which have conspired to keep women
disempowered: their alleged biological destiny, aided and abetted by a powerful patriarchy
which explicitly excludes women from power. Indeed, these forces may be perceived as two
sides of the same coin: sexist patriarchal discourse. I have argued above that Buffy’s destiny as a
slayer refutes the notion that women’s biology implies a limited destiny. In addition, Buffy’s
final act in the series constitutes a radical revolution against patriarchal power – a revolution that
123
has thus far evoked surprisingly little commentary. In a clear assault on the patriarchy, she
decrees an end to centuries-old male prescriptions that severely limit women’s power by
essentially dividing them – using the age-old method of divide and rule. Buffy empowers all
potential slayers, and as she does so the camera underlines this by zeroing in on ordinary girls
everywhere. The following dialogue ensues:
Xander: We saved the world.
Willow: We changed the world. I can feel them, Buffy. All over. Slayers are
awakening everywhere.
In this, Buffy has affinities with many feminist texts of speculative fiction, including The
Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart (1985), which asserts the synergistic power of
collectivity as opposed to the power of a single exceptional individual. Clearly, when so many
women share so much power, control by a tradition-bound, male-dominated Watcher’s Council
is subverted. In sharing her power, Buffy leads an inexorable charge against traditional male
authority. Thus, the show has grown from its starting point, where a hesitant young woman
began to find her power, supported by her two caring friends, to the final, triumphant moment
when that same woman, now grown mature, wise and confident, having saved the world with her
allies, now in a very real sense passes the torch to all the women of the world by sharing her
power with all the potential slayers.
The final episode of Buffy, screened in May of 2003, sent a strong message that women
are awakening to a new power – more power than women have ever enjoyed before. Moreover,
124
Buffy and other shows about women action heroes sent a message that this new power is different
from traditional power, for in the course of the past three decades of television history the small
screen has seen women action heroes not only don the hero’s cape, but actually redesign it.
Heroes such as Xena, Janeway and Buffy entirely embody female masculinity, even though none
of them looks remotely masculine, reflecting my definition of female masculinity based on
behaviours and ways of thinking, rather than on physical appearance.
These female action heroes are able to perform masculinity in a way that is enormously
empowering, as the masculine traits and behaviours they choose are those of the archetypal hero:
they calmly claim the right to authority, and repeatedly display strength, courage, assertiveness,
leadership, and physicality (and sometimes violence). Moreover, these female action heroes also
choose to perform many aspects of “femininity” that both increase their power and enrich the
archetype of hero, taking it to a place that moves fantasy to an entirely new realm. Indeed, I
argue that Buffy takes this to the extent that the show may be said to revision the action hero,
creating a vision of the action hero that encompasses some qualities of both “masculinity” and
“femininity,” and thereby modeling a brave new world in which women may choose to perform
those gender acts which empower them, rather than being constrained by the narrow dictates of
tradition and the patriarchy (or by their allegedly limiting biology).
This takes the traditional liberal feminist demand for women to have freedom to choose
to an entirely new level, for it implies that women can not only choose to be equal to men, but
125
can choose to be as masculine as some men. Here it is pertinent to note that part of the male
backlash against the first wave of feminism was an accusation that women were “trying to be
like men.” To that, an appropriate response might be, “Why not?” Just as a Christian once posed
the question, “Why should the devil have all the nice songs?” postmodern feminists may ask,
“Why should men have all the heroic qualities?” These small screen heroes effectively
demonstrate that – contrary to commonplace assumptions – masculinity is possible and desirable
within female bodies, regardless of what Halberstam refers to as the “collective failure to
imagine and ratify the masculinity produced by, for, and within women” (Halberstam 1998: 15).
As noted by Halberstam, “female masculinities are framed as the rejected scraps of dominant
masculinity in order that male masculinity may appear to be the real thing” (Halberstam 1998:
1). However, these female heroes give the lie to this, for their female masculinities are indeed the
real thing – the thing of which extraordinarily successful television series are made, which in
turn illustrates that the collective imagination of popular culture is increasingly able to imagine
and ratify the masculinity produced by, for, and within women.
I refer here to popular culture in general, because contrary to what might be expected,
these shows are not only watched by females, or only by adolescent males. For a start, they have
enjoyed phenomenal success with both sexes. But beyond that, the demographic that watches
these shows is not limited to adolescents. Certainly, shows such as Buffy originally targeted
young people. However, they targeted them with an explicit sociological intent:
126
In this era of postfeminism, new avenues are being sought to spread the ideals of
feminism and the potential of possible vehicles, such as mass media, are being
realised. However, when using mass media, such as television, in such a fashion,
the intellectualizations of the highbrow modernist/feminist movements have been
largely stripped away, leaving little but an easily digestible skeletal foundation.
The aim of such a method is to target a younger demographic than traditional
critique would usually focus upon. The television program Buffy the Vampire
Slayer is such a vehicle, presenting feminism in a postmodern form “for the
masses.” (Thompson 2003)
In short, shows such as Buffy repackage feminism in a form accessible to non-intellectuals and
youth. Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, says of the show, “if I can make teenage boys comfortable
with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing what’s happening, it’s better
than sitting down and selling them on feminism” (Fudge 1999:4).
Shows such as Buffy were aimed at young people and certainly reached this target, along
with their message of feminism – packaged for a postmodern era. However, it is pertinent to note
that they also reached many beyond this target demographic. For example, statistics show that
the average age of viewers who watch Buffy is 29 (Dumars 1999). This crossing of lines between
youth and maturity may be seen as characteristic of the fantasy genre: “In Fantasy, the boundary
between childhood and maturity can often become blurred. Stories written for children often
examine adult problems in the guise of odysseys through imaginary lands or conflicts with extraterrestrials” (Cawthorn and Moorcock 1988: 179). It would seem that Buffy was not just a role
model and a source of inspiration for adolescents: she appealed also to older viewers. For
example, the WB network (which aired Buffy in 1999) reported that Buffy was its top-rated
program in all of these demographics:
127
•
Adults 18-34
•
Women 18-34
•
Persons 12-34
Buffy also tied with Angel (a program which was a spin-off from Buffy, but which
featured a male action hero) as the highest rated series in the following demographics:
•
Teens 12-17
•
Male teens
•
Men 18-49
(Time Warner December 2, 1999)
These statistics indicate that the postmodernist feminist message of Buffy reached a broad
swath of society. Moreover, the television shows of the past three decades, which I have
discussed, as well as the filmic texts I discussed in Chapter Three, did more than deliver an
accessible message of female empowerment. They also did something quite radical and
extraordinary to an archetype that had endured for at least twenty-eight centuries, as will be
discussed in my conclusion.
128
Chapter Five:
Conclusion
In the last three decades we have seen the sudden and thrilling emergence of female
action heroes with decidedly masculine behaviours and ways of thinking. These women have
risen to prominence not in a separate realm or genre, but within the mainstream of action films
and science fiction television. As noted by Tasker:
… those action films in which women have taken central roles were not
developed in a separate generic space. Indeed, the increased inclusion of women
in action roles has both contributed to and been part of the ways in which the
genre has evolved in recent years …. (2004: 68)
Specifically, I have argued in this dissertation that the contribution of female action heroes in
recent filmic texts has been to revision the age-old archetype of the hero dramatically, moving it
from its traditional, entirely “masculine” position, to a new position which also embraces some
“feminine” traits, notably maternal feeling and nurturing, empathetic caring, sharing, and a talent
for and enjoyment of communication. This position has showcased a new type of heroism, in
which heroes share their power, and in so doing empower other people to be heroes, or at least to
rise to their fullest potential. This has been achieved by transgressing the boundaries of the old
heroic archetype in no uncertain terms, thereby transforming it into a new archetype that
embraces behaviours and ways of thinking which arguably reflect the best and most positive
aspects of both sides of the previously diametrically opposed gender binary. The new female
action heroes have in effect offered “an articulation of gender and sexuality that foregrounds a
129
combination of conventionally masculine and feminine elements” (Tasker 2004: 68). In the
process, they have given the lie to the claims of biological essentialism by smashing the
stereotypes associated with the gender binary; they have convincingly delivered gender
performances that were previously thought to be a contradiction in terms, namely, they have
performed as masculine women. In doing this, they have asserted the right to perform some of
the most powerful and admirable of the traditionally masculine behaviours.
Female action heroes have not simply given up “feminine” performances in favour of
“masculine” performances, thus crossing from one side of the gender binary to the other. Rather,
they have been truly transgressive, in that they have treated the previously strictly separated
behaviours and ways of thinking not as diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive opposites,
but rather as a giant smorgasbord of exciting and useful possibilities, from which they have
freely chosen whichever behaviours seem appropriate for given situations. In so doing they have
taken what are arguably the best parts of femininity and masculinity, and forged them into a type
of toughness that has never been seen before, and which transgressively incorporates the realms
of femininity and masculinity. Thus, these female action heroes are engaged in a dynamic
process of becoming, as they flexibly and freely choose from a range of hitherto gender-linked
behaviours to create a new mix that enables them to be an entirely new kind of hero. For
example, Ripley’s gender expression is more transgressive than if she were merely “acting like a
man.” Instead, she is acting like – and becoming – something entirely new: a female-bodied
person who is able to choose from a range of behaviours linked to both “femininity” and
“masculinity.” Unsurprisingly for students of Halberstam or Butler, in performing this
transgressive range of behaviours, heroes such as Ripley are entirely authentic, and these female
130
action heroes have thus set an exciting and liberatory example for all people, by demonstrating
that authentic gender-linked behaviour derives from choice, not from biology. This has taken the
traditional feminist demand for freedom of choice for women to new levels, for it represents the
freedom to choose how to be, rather than merely what to do. It also has exposed the instability of
the gender binary system that was formerly assumed to be cast in biological stone, so that
women were thought to be forever precluded, by their very biology, from many powerful and
heroic ways of thinking and behaving. Crucially, the possibility for heroism is not limited to
extraordinary situations and super-heroic women. Instead, by pointing to the “instability of a
gendered system,” the new female action heroes have also helped to produce “an alternative
space through that instability” (Tasker 2004: 69), so that in fact female action heroes in recent
popular filmic texts are blazing the path to a new future of possibilities for women:
Xena … and other tough women … are shaking up women’s roles beyond
American popular culture. Such figures … show their female audience members
that they can challenge generations-old stereotypes about what it means to be a
woman. For centuries, women have been taught to be physically and mentally
nonaggressive if they wish to be accepted by society. They were also expected to
wait for men to save them. Now, the media’s tough women are teaching real
women dramatically different ideas about what it means to be female. For
example, being aggressive is desirable, and women should not wait for men to
save them. Such changing celluloid notions about what it means to be a woman
are influencing real life. We have yet to discover in this new millennium where
these new notions will take us. (Inness 2004: 15)
It is true that we have yet to discover where this revisioning of what it means to be a
woman, and the concomitant revisioning of what an action hero can look like, will take us.
However, what is clear is that the world has changed, in a way that must surely threaten and
ultimately destabilize the patriarchy, for these filmic texts have inevitably spilt over into popular
culture. For example, the “Terminator 2: 3-D Interactive Ride/Show” at Universal Studios in
131
California is a spin-off from the hugely successful Terminator films. The entire spectacle is led
and dominated by a woman playing the character Sarah Connor. The John Connor character, and
even the large bulk of the Terminator character, are mere adjuncts to the central presence of this
action hero on a mission to save the world – a hero who is a woman. Thousands of little girls
witness this spectacle. Yet when their own mothers were children, just a few decades ago,
popular culture was peopled entirely by male heroes, such as Superman, Batman, Spiderman,
Aquaman, and the Flash. It is becoming increasingly clear that the behaviours and ways of
thinking commonly lumped together and designated “masculine” have nothing to do with
biology at all; they are societal constructs, most likely constructed to perpetuate a hegemonic
system of patriarchy, considering that the “masculine” attributes are precisely those which are
required for power in the public sphere. That fact that popular culture points the way to a
deconstruction of the supposedly essential construction of masculinity built upon the foundation
of male bodies implies that we are edging closer to a more equitable society. Indeed, today girls
are growing up in a world where women are heroes, both on and off the screen. After all, the
most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, recently came close to having
a woman presiding over its highest office; moreover, that country will soon have the imposing
Hilary Clinton in the powerful position of Secretary of State. In this, she will follow in the
footsteps of Condoleezza Rice, who is not only a woman but also black (and hence the inheritor
of intersecting oppressions). As noted by Inness (2004: 3), “Tough women are appearing not
only in the popular media but in real life, too.” Surely this will make a difference in the way the
girls and young women of today envisage their own femininity, and in the scope they can
imagine for their own gender expression in the world.
132
I suggest that there remains but one final step: to overcome what Halberstam insightfully
identifies as the “collective failure to imagine and ratify the masculinity produced by, for, and
within women” (1998: 15). Our society venerates many of the attributes associated with
masculinity, and these are precisely the attributes which open the way to autonomy and power
within the domestic sphere, and more especially within the public sphere. Hence, it is time to
allow our girl-children and young women to aspire to female masculinity, as I defined it in
Chapter One of this dissertation:
Female masculinity is a particular expression or performance of masculinity, an
expression or performance that is entirely authentic, and that consists in femalebodied persons engaging in ways of thought and behaviour that have traditionally
been considered masculine, such as claiming the right to authority, or displaying
strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence),
and very often heroism.
The importance of the freedom to be “masculine” in this sense cannot be over-stated, for
this is a freedom that enables women to escape their frequently assigned prison of the merely
domestic, and to be powerful also in the public sphere (whether as heroes or in other ways),
where they may act for the good of the many as well as (or instead of) for the good of the few
(that is, usually their own domestic circle). Already, millions of real life women engage in such
ways of thought and behaviour – popular filmic texts do not after all originate from a vacuum,
neither are they projected into empty space. However, there is currently an almost schizophrenic
conceptual split within the popular consciousness, in that masculine-acting female action heroes
are admired on the popular screen, but masculine women in everyday life are repudiated as
“unnatural.” In particular, while masculinity in terms of behaviour and ways of thinking is
sometimes condoned (as for example in the cases of Clinton and Rice), masculinity in terms of
133
presentation (dress, hairstyle, and so on) continues to be regarded as unnatural or pathological.
This is very likely the reason why most of the female action heroes I have discussed present as
conventionally feminine in terms of their dress and hairstyles. This is salutary on the one hand,
because it has the liberatory implication that women who choose to present themselves in a
traditionally feminine manner can nevertheless lay claim to behaviours and ways of thinking that
have traditionally been reserved for men. Thus, even women who prefer to conform physically to
social mores may lay claim to the authoritativeness and power that has traditionally been the
domain of men. On the other hand, there is cause for concern in the realization that the gender
binary is still maintained so rigidly when it comes to physical attributes, specifically the
presentation of the self.
In this respect, we appear to have advanced little since the days of Radclyffe Hall, when
gender performances associated with the “opposite” sex were assumed to be signs of congenital
inversion – indeed, judging by the murder of Brandon Teena in 1993, many of us have not
advanced at all. Teena (who was born Teena Renae Brandon on December 12, 1972) was a
transgendered person, who was born with a female body, but began to live as a male in his teens.
When he was just 21, Teena was brutally raped and beaten, then subsequently shot to death, by
two men who did not believe Teena had the right to live as a man while biologically a female.
The murder occurred in Nebraska, USA, in 1993. The murderers were so filled with hatred that
they continued to stab Teena long after he was dead. This tragedy was a classic example of how
strongly some people in our society feel about enforcing rigid gender roles (Jones 1996). 1 Thus,
1
Teena’s short life and brutal death were the subject of the Academy Award winning 1999 film, Boys Don’t Cry,
starring Hilary Swank as Teena (Peirce 1999).
134
in a very important respect the politically-motivated, hegemonic ideology of the supposedly
biologically-ordained gender binary remains salient. Acknowledging the authenticity, legitimacy
and respectability of female masculinity (whether physical or psychological) would remove the
need that many women still feel to adopt the kinds of masquerades of femininity to which
Riviere referred almost 80 years ago. This need is not generated from an unresolved Electra
Complex with their mother, but from the fact that most human beings need social approval to
legitimate their behaviours. It is time to legitimate female masculinity, so that the door is opened
for more female heroes, both on the small and large screens and, more importantly, in real life.
Fortunately the stage is set for such legitimation in this postmodern era when gender
norms are staggering under the weight of rigorous and unremitting scrutiny – from all sides.
Indeed, there has been a fascinating congruence between popular culture and sophisticated
gender theory, in that both, in their own ways, have attacked the gender binary. Theorists such as
Halberstam and Butler have done this explicitly, while films such as the Alien series and
Terminator 2 have implied the demise of traditional gender norms by featuring women who
boldly transgress them. Similarly, when the producers of Star Trek Voyager dared to place their
faith in Captain Kathryn Janeway, a loud and clear message was sent that viewers were simply
going to have to accept that a woman could captain a star ship. And in the words of producer
Joss Whedon, the film and television versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were about “the joy of
female power: having it, using it, sharing it” (Gottlieb 2002). Concomitantly, in the social
sphere, oppressed groups such as gays and lesbians were demanding the exact same privileges
accorded to all other human beings, up to and including marriage. While queers were
uncompromisingly chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” Voyager effectively – and
135
just as uncompromisingly – said to mainstream audiences, “Yes, the captain is a woman – deal
with it.” At the same time, Butler (1998) was uncompromisingly calling for gender trouble in
order to “open up the field of possibility for gender” (vii) so that people who had hitherto had to
“live in the social world as what is impossible, illegible, unrealizable, unreal and illegitimate”
(vii) could be recognized as possible, legible, realizable, real and legitimate. In a more narrowly
focused but equally uncompromising way, Halberstam was demanding the recognition of female
masculinity, so that “the masculinity produced by, for, and within women” could be imagined
and ratified by the collective imagination (Halberstam 1998: 15).
As I argued in Chapter Two, the emergence of the notion of women as action heroes was
made possible by a profound shift in consciousness which rendered such a notion conceivable:
we have evolved to the point where the popular consciousness, the popular media, and also
gender theory are able to conceive of masculine, heroic women. This seems to be the result of
several combined forces (emanating from the spheres of academia, society and the mainstream
mass media), all coming together in an unprecedented but serendipitous way, so that gender and
its associated performances are increasingly understood as social constructs, rather than as
biologically ordained (and hence immutable) imperatives. Moreover, I contend that the popular
filmic texts I have discussed perform an especially valuable function, in that they package a
revolutionary, liberatory feminist message in an accessible form. This is salutary, and indeed
vitally important. After all, Butler’s ideas may be revolutionary, but they are also couched in
language that is inaccessible to most people. Halberstam is more accessible, but still is not read
by the average adolescent. It is up to popular culture to reach “everyperson”, for as pointed out
136
by Inness, “Popular culture does not simply reflect women’s lives; it helps to create them …”
(Inness 1999: 7).
The average adolescent (and also, as we have seen, older people), were certainly listening
when Buffy challenged young women: “Are you ready to be strong?” (final episode of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer). It seems that women are indeed ready to be strong; they have spent enough
time “cowering in corners” and screaming. Indeed, if a contemporary science fiction movie
portrayed a women screaming and cowering in the corner while her male friend was beaten to a
bloody pulp by an unfriendly alien, the audience would wonder “What’s wrong with her?”,
rather than assuming that her hysterical and cowardly behaviour was simply the inevitable result
of her flawed, feminine biology. Recalling the triumphant moment when Sarah Connor tells the
monstrous terminator cyborg, “You’re terminated, fucker,” popular culture is effectively
proclaiming that the biological essentialism that once consigned women to a weak, inferior status
has been terminated. Contrary to Freud’s assertion that anatomy is destiny, popular culture now
asserts that destiny is malleable and women are strong. The Terminator films make this explicit:
“The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” For women, the
message is clear: women are no longer constrained by a biological essentialism which effectively
precludes them from all kinds of things, ranging from understanding or enjoying science and
technology, to being brave, strong, assertive and physical, to being efficacious in the public
sphere, and even to being heroes. Instead, women are now free to choose freely and flexibly
from behaviours and ways of thinking considered “feminine” or “masculine,” so that they can
change their own fates, and so that they can be heroes if they choose – thereby saving
themselves, and possibly even saving the world! Women can claim the right to authority over
137
not just themselves, but even over the world, if they so choose. The process to which De
Beauvoir referred as becoming a woman has become far more open-ended, for the gender-related
performances associated with it have become so much more diverse, now encompassing both
“feminine” and “masculine” behaviours and ways of thinking. There is tremendous liberatory
and transformative potential for all women in this new potential for blending all that is best in
masculinity and femininity. Indeed, there is tremendous liberatory and transformative potential
for all people in the acknowledgement that gender performances may be as multifaceted as the
weather, and that none of them is less authentic than another – as Butler explained, all gender
positions are constructed. This leaves the field wide open for all people to construct whatever
kinds of gender position they choose, including choosing to be heroes in their own sphere of life.
I suggest that we are witnessing in several parallel and mutually supportive spheres no
less than a Copernican revolution in terms of the choices in gender performances that are
available to women today. Moreover, there has also been no less than a Copernican revolution in
the realm of popular media. While people thought they were simply going to the movies, or
relaxing in front of the TV, something extraordinary, even revolutionary, was in fact happening
on entertainment screens. The heroic archetype that was already evident twenty-eight centuries
ago when Homer wrote about the adventures of Achilles and Odysseus was being attacked and
dispatched – terminated, in fact. This archetype had been unassailable for millennia, and almost
the entire canon of Western literature had faithfully adhered to it. Accordingly, Jung identified
the hero as a key archetype. Yet, as pointed out by Le Guin, this Jungian archetype was an
example of “mind forms of the Western European psyche as perceived by a man” (1993: 6).
Thus, when it came to contemporary popular culture, all action heroes were male, and there
138
simply were no female heroes. And although the word “heroine” existed, it emphatically was not
coterminous with “hero.” Action heroes were narrowly constrained to a group of behaviours and
ways of thinking defined as “masculine,” and assumed to be biologically ordained – that is, male
action heroes had to have masculine traits because they were males, and heroes had to be male
because only masculine traits are heroic. Hence, despite a yawning gap of twenty-eight centuries,
there was little difference between Achilles and Clint Eastwood – both of these classic heroic
archetypes claimed the right to authority, and displayed (in terms of my definition of
masculinity) strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, physicality (and sometimes violence),
and very often heroism. At the same time, both Achilles and Clint showed no talent for
communication, little or no regard for family or community, and no interest in sharing or
empathetic caring. By contrast, the new female action hero combines all of these with many or
all of the classic, masculine heroic ways of thinking.
I suggest that it is impossible to overstate what has happened here – this is no less than a
Copernican revolution of the classic heroic archetype. To use Le Guin’s term, vision has been
revisioned, thanks to the “revisioning of gender called feminism” (Le Guin 1993: 17) and to a
serendipitous confluence of popular culture and gender theory. Hence, the old archetype is dead,
and heroes will never be the same again. Finally, it is likely that this revolution will impact not
only female action heroes, but also male action heroes. There is a moment in Terminator 2
(which I discussed in Chapter 3 of this dissertation) when Sarah Connor breaks down and her son
comes to her rescue. Sarah has been rendered catatonic by the conflicting demands of the many
and the few, and while her “masculine” side urges her to kill an innocent man, her “feminine”
side precludes this. In coming to her aid, her son demonstrates the classic “feminine” attributes
139
of empathetic caring. Moreover, unlike classic male heroes, he is adamant that the needs of the
few cannot be sacrificed to the needs of the many – he will not condone the murder of an
innocent man, especially in front of the man’s wife and child. It thus seems likely that although
John Connor may be fated to save the world, he will do so treading not in the footsteps of
Achilles, but in the footsteps of his mother, who models the new heroic archetype by combining
masculine and feminine behaviours and ways of thinking. Like all of the new female action
heroes, Sarah Connor models this new heroic archetype not just for her son, but for everyone,
most especially the women and girls of the world.
140
Bibliography
Primary Texts: Literary
Atwood, Margaret. 1988; rpt. 1999. Cat’s Eye. Toronto: Seal Books.
Austen, Jane. 1818; rpt. 1996. Northanger Abbey. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club.
Hall, Radclyffe. 1928; rpt. 1974. The Well of Loneliness. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Pocket Books.
Munro, Alice. 1968; rpt. 1996. “Boys and Girls.” In Dance of the Happy Shades. New York:
Random House.
Primary Texts: Films and Television Series
Beesley, Mark and Eric Brevig. (Directors). 1995. Xena Warrior Princess. MCA Television.
Cameron, James. (Director). 1984. Terminator. Hemdale Film.
---. (Director). 1986. Aliens. Twentieth Century Fox.
---. 1991. Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Twentieth Century Fox.
Fincher, David. (Director) 1992. Alien 3. Twentieth Century Fox.
Harlin, Renny. (Director). 1996. The Long Kiss Goodnight. New Line Cinema.
Jeunet, Jean-Pierre. (Director) 1997. Alien: Resurrection. Twentieth Century Fox.
Kuzui, Fran Rubel (Director) and Joss Whedon (Writer). 1992. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Twentieth Century Fox.
Rodenberry, Gene. 1966 – 1969. Star Trek. NBC.
Rodenberry, Gene. 1995 – 2001. Star Trek Voyager. UPN.
Scott, Ridley. (Director). 1979. Alien. Twentieth Century Fox.
Scott, Ridley. (Director). 1997. GI Jane. Buena Vista Pictures.
Whedon, Joss. (Creator/Director/Writer). 1997 – 2003. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Television
Series. Warner Bros (1st five seasons); United Paramount Network (last 2 seasons).
141
Secondary Texts
Auerbach, Nina. 2001. “Waiting Together: Pride and Prejudice”. In Pride and Prejudice, Donald
Gray. (Ed.) 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company: 326-338.
Barber, Katherine (Ed). 1998. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Toronto: Oxford University
Press.
Berger, Maurice, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson (Eds.), 1995. Constructing Masculinity. New
York: Routledge.
Besson, Luc. (Director). 1990. Nikita. Gaumont.
Bonnière, René, and Chris Gross. (Director). 1997. La Femme Nikita.
Bornstein, Kate. 1995. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us. New York: Random
House.
---. 1998. My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or
Something Else Entirely. New York: Routledge.
Brown, Jeffrey A. 2004. “Gender, Sexuality, and Toughness: The Bad Girls of Action Film and
Comic Books.” Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. Sherrie
A. Inness (Ed.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 47-74.
Bullock, Alan and Stephen Trombley. 1999. The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought.
3rd edition. London: HarperCollins.
Bundtzen, Lynda K. 1987. “Monstrous Mothers: Medusa, Grendel and Now Alien.” Film
Quarterly 40(3): 11-17.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
---. 1998. “Introduction: Rethinking Genders.” Velvet Light Trap, 41: 2-10.
---. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge.
Califia, Patrick. 2003. Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgender Politics. San Francisco: Cleis
Press.
Campbell, Joseph. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Cawthorn, James and Michael Moorcock. 1988. Fantasy: The 100 Best Books. London: Xanadu
Publications.
Clynes, Manfred E., and Nathan S. Kline. September 1960 “Cyborgs and space.” Astronautics:
26-27 and 74-75. Reprinted in Gray, Mentor, and Figueroa-Sarriera, eds. 1995. The
Cyborg Handbook, New York: Routledge: 29-34.
142
Coakley, Jay and Peter Donnelly. 2004. Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. Toronto:
McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Cromwell, Jason. 1999. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders and Sexualities.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Crow, Barbara A. and Gotell, Lise. 2000. Open Boundaries: A Canadian Women’s Studies
Reader. Toronto: Prentice-Hall Canada Inc.
De Beauvoir, Simone. 1974. The Second Sex. New York: Virago Books.
De Vito, Danny. (Director). 1996. Matilda. TriStar Pictures.
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans.
Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Dumars, Denise. October 28, 1999. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Authors Nancy Holder and
Christopher Golden.” Retrieved 28 Dec. 2006 from http://www.mania.com/buffyvampire-slayer-authors-nancy-holder-christopher-golden_article_2925.html
Durkheim, Emile. 1999. The Rules of Sociological Method. 8th ed. Translated by Solovay, Sarah
A. and John H. Mueller, and edited by Catlin, George E.G. New York: The Free Press.
Eagleton, Terry. 2004. After Theory. London: Penguin.
---. 2003. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd edition. Minnesota: University of Minnesota
Press.
Early, Frances H. Winter, 2001. “Staking her Claim: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Transgressive
Woman Warrior.” Journal of Popular Culture, 35(3): 11- 27.
Edwards, Tim. 2004. “Queer Fears: Against the Cultural Turn.” Sexualities, 1(4): 471-484.
Epstein, Rob and Jeffrey Freeman. (Directors). 1995. The Celluloid Closet. Home Box Office.
Fausto-Sterling, Ann. 1992. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men. New
York: Basic Books.
---. March – April, 1993. “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female are not Enough.” The
Sciences: 20-25.
---. 1999. “Is Gender Essential?” Sissies & Tomboys: Gender Nonconformity & Homosexual
Childhood. Matthew Rottnek (Ed.). New York: New York University Press: 52-57.
---. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic
Books.
---. 2004. “The Five Sexes, Revisited.” Feminisms and Womanisms: A Women’s Studies Reader.
Althea Prince and Susan Silva-Wayne (Eds.). Toronto: Women’s Press: 133-138.
1996. ---. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. New
York: Beacon Press.
143
Feinberg, Leslie. 2003. Stone Butch Blues. New York: Alyson Books.
Ferraro, Julian. Nov. 22, 1996. “Male-Female Experiences.” Times Literary Supplement, 4886:
24.
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction. New York,
Vintage Books.
Freeman, R. and Freeman, T. 1992. “An Anatomical Commentary on the Concept of Infantile
Oral Sadism.” Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 73: 343-348.
Friedman, Sandra Susan. 1997. When Girls Feel Fat: Helping Girls through Adolescence.
Toronto: HarperCollins.
Frost, Corey. 2005. “Intersections of Gender and Ethnic Performativity in Ann-Marie
MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees.” Canadian Review of American Studies 35(2): 195206.
Fudge, Rachel. Summer 1999. “The Buffy Effect: A Tale of Cleavage and Marketing.” Bitch
Magazine 10: 1-10.
Garber, Marjorie. 1989. “Spare Parts: The Surgical Construction of Gender.” Differences: A
Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 1(3): 137-159.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “On Female Identity and Writing by Women.” In Elizabeth Abel (Ed.)
Writing and Sexual Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 177-91
Gearhart, Sally Mille. 1985. The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women. London: The
Women’s Press.
Goldman, Marlene. 1990. “Penning in the Bodies: The Construction of Gendered Subjects in
Alice Munro's Boys and Girls.” Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature
Canadienne 15(1): 62-75.
Gottlieb, Allie. September 26, 2002. “Buffy’s Angels”, Retrieved 27 July 2007 from
Metroactive.com.
Grace. 25 June 2007. “Heroine Content: Feminist and Anti-Racist Thoughts on Women Kicking
Ass.” Aliens (Director’s Cut). Retrieved 3 January 2008 from
http://www.heroinecontent.net/archives/2007/06/aliens_collectors_edition.html
Gray, F. Gary (Director). 1996. Set it Off. New Line Productions.
Haag, Pamela S. 1992. “In Search of `The Real Thing’: Ideologies of Love, Modern Romance,
and Women’s Sexual Subjectivity in the United States, 1920-40.” Journal of the History
of Sexuality, 2(4): 547-577.
Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
---. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York and
London: New York University Press.
144
Hall, Radclyffe. 1997. Your John: The Love letters of Radclyffe Hall.
Hamelin, Christine. Nov. 1996. “Self and Other.” Canadian Forum 75(854): 43-4.
Hamilton, Edith and Huntington Cairns. 1961. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the
Letters. Pantheon Books: New York.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in
the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of
Nature. New York; Routledge: 149-181.
Hills, Elizabeth. 1999. “From ‘Figurative Males’ to Action Heroines: Further Thoughts on
Active Women in the Cinema.” Screen, 40.1: 38-50.
Hogan, David. (Director). 1996. Barb Wire. Universal Studios.
Horney, K. 1939. New Ways in Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.
Horrorist, The. Horrorwatch web site. 2003. Retrieved 12 January 2008 from
http://www.horrorwatch.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6
Hutchinson, Sharon E. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Inness, Sherrie A. 1999. Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture.
Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press,
Inness, Sherrie A. (Ed). 2004. Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jagose, Annamarie. 1996. Queer Theory: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press.
James, E. & Mendlesohn, F. (Eds.) 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Jones, Aphrodite. 1996. All She Wanted: Brandon Teena: The Girl who Became a Boy but Paid
the Ultimate Price. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Kaufman, Michael. 1987. “The Construction of Masculinity and the Triad of Men’s Violence.”
In Kaufman, Michael, ed. Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and
Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1-29.
Kotula, Dean. 2002. The Phallus Palace: Female to Male Transsexuals. Los Angeles: Alyson
Publications.
Kring, Tim. (Director). 2006-2008. Heroes. NBC.
Krupp, Charla. June 1992. “She’s Bald and She’s Back!” Glamour: 163.
Kuzui, Fran Rubel (Director) and Joss Whedon (Writer). 1992. “Featurette.” On Buffy the
Vampire Slayer. Twentieth Century Fox.
145
Lancaster, Roger N. and Micaela di Leonardo. 1997. The Gender Sexuality Reader: Culture,
History, Political Economy. New York and London: Routledge.
Lee, Ang. (Director). 2000. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Sony Pictures.
Le Guin, Ursula K. 1993. Earthsea Revisioned. Cambridge, England: Children’s Literature New
England.
Levin, Ira. 1967. Rosemary’s Baby. New York: Random House.
Lukinbeal, Christopher and Stuart C. Aitken.1998. “Sex, Violence and the Weather: Male
Hysteria, Scale and the Fractal Geography of Patriarchy.” In Heidi J. Nast, Steve Pile.
Places Through the Body. Routledge, 1998.
MacDonald, Ann-Marie. 1998. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). Toronto: Vintage
Canada.
Magoulick, Mary. Oct. 2006. “Frustrating Female Heroism: Mixed Messages in Xena, Nikita,
and Buffy.” Journal of Popular Culture, 39(5): 729-755.
Martell, Yan. 1997. Self. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited.
McCaughey, Martha and Neal King. (Eds.) 2001. Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the
Movies. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
McCullers, Carson. 2006. The Member of the Wedding. New York, Mariner Books.
Merrick, H. 2003. “Gender in Science Fiction.” In James, E. & Mendlesohn, F. (Eds.) The
Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction: 241-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Miller, Isabel. 1973. Patience and Sarah. New York: Fawcett Crest.
Mittelmeier, Jenna. Sept. 2007. “A Generation of Sex Symbols: From Baywatch to Britney,
Nothing Seems to Shock us Anymore.” Retrieved from
http://www.kansan.com/stories/2007/sep/21/sex_symbols/
Mulvey, Laura. Autumn 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3: 6-18.
Munro, Alice. 1974. Lives of Girls and Women. Scarborough, Ontario: Signet.
Muska, Susan and Gréta Olafsdóttir. (Directors). 1998. The Brandon Teena Story. Zeitgeist
Films.
Nestle, Joan, Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins (Eds.) 2002. GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond
the Sexual Binary. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications.
Noble, Jean Bobby. 2004. Masculinities without Men? Female Masculinity in Twentieth Century
Fictions. Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press.
146
Nova, T. 2007. “G.I. Jane: An Indulgently Butch Army Film.” The Queer Film Review.
Retrieved from http://www.tatenova.com/queerfilm/?p=57
Nussbaum, Martha C. Feb. 22, 1999. “The Professor of Parody: The Hip Defeatism of Judith
Butler.” The New Republic: 37-45.
Pearson, Carol and Katherine Pope. 1981. The Female Hero in British and American Literature.
New York: Bowker.
Peirce, Kimberly. (Director). 1999. Boys Don’t Cry. 20th Century Fox.
Pratt, Annis. 1981. Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press
Queen, Carol and Lawrence Schimel (Eds.). 1997. PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions
about Gender and Sexuality. San Francisco: Cleis Press.
Raimi, Sam (Director). 2002. Spiderman. Columbia Pictures.
Ramet, Sabrina Petra, (Ed.) 1996. Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures: Anthropological and
Historical Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Riviere, Joan. 1929. “Womanliness as a Masquerade.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis,
10: 303-313.
Ross, Sharon. 2004. “Tough Enough”: Female Friendship and Heroism in Xena and Buffy.” In
Inness, Sherrie A. (Ed). Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 231-255.
Rottnek, Matthew. (Ed.) 1999. Sissies & Tomboys: Gender Nonconformity & Homosexual
Childhood. New York: New York University Press.
Russ, Joanna. 1995. To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Salih, Sara. 2002. Judith Butler. London: Routledge.
Scott, Joan Wallach. 1998. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” Gender and the
Politics of History. Joan Wallach Scott. (Ed.) New York: Columbia University Press: 2850.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1995. “Gosh, Boy George, You Must be Awfully Secure in your
Masculinity!” In Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson (Eds.). Constructing
Masculinity. New York: Routledge: 11-20.
Sexy Cartoon Porn. 2008. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2008 from
http://www.sexycartoonporn.net/192/super-hero-porn/wonder-woman-porn.html
Shakespeare, William. 1987. Twelfth Night. New Revised Edition. New York: Signet Classic
Books.
147
Somerville, Siobhan. 1994. “Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body.”
Journal of the History of Sexuality 5(2): 243-266.
Spretnak, Charlene. 1997. “Radical Nonduality in Ecofeminist Philosophy.” In Warren, Karen J.
(Ed.) Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press: 425-436.
Startrek.com. 2006. Retrieved 24 Nov. 2007 from
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/cast/69077.html
Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction . Yale University Press.
Tarantino, Quentin. (Director). 2003. Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Miramax Films.
Tarantino, Quentin. (Director). 2004. Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Miramax Films.
Tasker, Yvonne. 2004. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London and
New York: Routledge.
Thompson, Jim. March 18, 2003. “`Just a girl’: Feminism, Postmodernism and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer.” Refractory 2. Retrieved 2 Aug. 2007 from
http://blogs.arts.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/2003/03/18/just-a-girl-feminismpostmodernism-and-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-jim-thompson/#more-23
Time Warner. Dec. 2, 1999. “The WB Tops Amongst Female Teens in November.” Retrieved 8
Dec. 2007 from http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,667569,00.html
Timmerman, J. H. 1983. Other Worlds: The Fantasy Genre. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press.
Tremain, Rose. 1992. Sacred Country. London: Sinclair-Stevenson.
Tung, Charlene. 2004. “Embodying an Image: Gender, Race and Sexuality in La Femme Nikita.”
Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. Sherrie A. Inness. (Ed.)
New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 95-121.
Two Sides to Nowhere. 30 May, 2007. “Frustrating Female Feminism: Missing the Point.”
Retrieved 15 July 2008 from http://twosidestonowhere.blogspot.com/2007/05/frustratingfemale-feminism-missing.html
Ussher, Jane M. 1997. Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex. Rutgers
University Press.
Ventura, Heliane. 1992. “Alice Munro’s `Boys and Girls’: Mapping Out Boundaries.”
Commonwealth Essays and Studies 15(1): 80-87.
West, Simon. (Director). 2001. Tomb Raider. Paramount Pictures.
Whedon, Joss. 1997. “Interview with Joss Whedon & David Boreanaz.” On Joss Whedon, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer Television Series on DVD, Season 1, Disk 1.
148
Whedon, Joss. (Creator/Director/Writer). 2002 – 2003. Firefly Television Series. Fox
Broadcasting Company.
Wilchins, Riki. 2002. “A Continuous Nonverbal Communication.” In GenderQueer: Voices
From Beyond the Sexual Binary. Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins (Eds). Los
Angeles: Alyson Publications: 11–17.
Wilcox, Fred M. (Director). 1956. Forbidden Planet. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
149